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THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 




THEN COLUMBUS SHOOK OUT THE BEAUTIFUL RED AND GOLU FLAc; OF SPAIN, 
AND TOOK POSSESSION OF THE ISLAND" 



THE STORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES 



BY 

MARIE LOUISE HERDMAN 



WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY 

A. S. FORREST 



^P^^- 



'I'M^. 







NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



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Copyright, 1916, hy 
Fkederick a. Stokes Comi-axy 

All rights reserved 



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SEP 18 1916 

©CI A 4 383 S? 
I -. V vi ^ 



TO 
ERIC AND THEODORA 



PREFACE 

Beside the Muskingum River, and at the mouth of the 
Licking, stands a city where tall factory chimneys rise like 
soot-wreathed monuments to Labor. It is a town of pot- 
teries, of brick-yards, and of all those creative industries 
whereby men produce form out of malleable clay. At one 
factory they make the minute tiles that are used in decora- 
tive paving, and there I once spent an enthralling after- 
noon watching the piecing together of a mosaic depicting 
the landing of Columbus. The plan of the picture was 
spread out upon a platform. It was divided into colored 
squares above each one of which a workman fitted a cor- 
respondingly colored tile. Tiny blocks of turquoise blue 
made a realistic sea. Gray tiles represented a neutral sky 
against which green palm trees stood out in vivid contrast. 

As the artisan drew upon the store of colored tiles for 
the working out of his plan, so I have drawn upon the pre- 
pared facts of history in writing this book. The stories in- 
corporated here are taken from so many sources that it is 
out of the question to acknowledge my obligation to each 
of the authors whose past industry has made this work 
possible. Through such magazines as The Century, Har- 
per's, and Scribner's, I am beholden to writers whose very 
names are a part of American history. My hope for this 
Story of the United States is that it may help to quicken 
interest in the growth of our great Republic, and that it 
may lead, at least a few, young readers into that fascinat- 
ing realm of literature which deals with the development 
of our country. In so far as it does this, it will relieve my 
indebtedness to other authors, since to further the appre- 
ciation of the mosaic of history is the true aim of every 
historian. ^ ^ H. 

Ann Arbor, Michigan. 



CONTENTS 

AFTER PAGE 

I IN THE BEGINNING 1 

II COLUMBUS DREAMS OF A NEW WAY TO INDIA . 5 

III A NEW WORLD IS DISCOVERED 9 

IV THE VOYAGE OF THE CABOTS AND OF AMERICUS 

VESPUCIUS 13 

V THE STORIES OF PONCE DE LEON, FERDINAND DE 

SOTO, AND VASCO DE BALBOA 16 

VI THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 21 

VII EARLY ATTEMPTS AT HOME BUILDING IN AMER- 
ICA 33 

VIII SIR WALTER RALEIGH TAKES AN INTEREST IN 

AMERICA 37 

IX CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF 

VIRGINIA 42 

X THE MAYFLOWER CARRIES THE PILGRIMS TO 

NEW ENGLAND 50 

XI THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND 57 

XII PERSECUTIONS AND WITCHES IN NEW ENGLAND 63 

XIII KING PHILIP'S WAR 69 

XIV NEW AMSTERDAM AND HOW IT BECAME NEW 

YORK 73 

XV THE SETTLEMENT OF MARYLAND AND THE CARO- 

LINAS 78 

XVI WILLIAM PENN AND THE QUAKERS SETTLE 

PENNSYLVANIA 83 

XVII GEORGIA IS SETTLED AND BECOMES A REFUGE 

FOR THE POOR 87 

XVIII SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES . 93 

XIX EARLY DAYS IN THE COLONIES 95 

XX WARS BETWEEN FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLON- 
ISTS 100 

XXI GENERAL BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT, AND THE DRIV- 
ING OUT OF THE ACADIANS 107 

XXII THE TAKING OF CANADA . 115 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIII PONTIAC'S WAR 103 

^XIV GEORGE WASHINGTON 129 

XXV GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA BEFORE THE REVOLU- 
TION 137 

XXVI CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR .... 141 
XXVII SOME FAMOUS AMERICANS OF THE REVOLUTION 149 

XXVIII THE FIRST SHOTS ARE FIRED 155 

XXIX THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL 161 

XXX GENERAL WASHINGTON TAKES COMMAND OF THE 

ARMY 167 

XXXI THE AMERICANS DECLARE THEIR INDEPEND- 
ENCE 172 

XXXII THE WAR GOES ON . 175 

XXXIII THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777 181 

XXXIV THE SURRENDER AT SARATOGA AND ITS CONSE- 

QUENCES 188 

XXXV THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 192 

XXXVI THE LAST YEARS OF WAR IN THE NORTH AND 

THE TREASON OF BENEDICT ARNOLD . . . .201 

XXXVII THE REVOLUTION CARRIED INTO THE SOUTH . . 207 

XXXVIII THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR . . .212 

XXXIX THE UNITED STATES ADOPTS THE CONSTITUTION 217 

XL THE INAUGURATION OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT 223 

XLI THROUGH THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION . . . .227 

XLII THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH, YIELDING PLACE 

TO THE NEW 236 

XLIII CONCERNING DOLLY MADISON 242 

XLIV THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE AND THE TREASON 

OF AARON BURR 247 

XLV WITH LEWIS AND CLARK FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 

TO THE PACIFIC 253 

XLVI WAR BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT 

BRITAIN 259 

XLVII SEA POWER IN THE WAR OF 1812 266 

XLVIII THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812. PEACE CON- 
CLUDED 273 

XLIX THE STEADY GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES. 

MORE STARS FOR THE FLAG 282 



CONTENTS xi 

IHAPTER PAGE 

L FROM MONROE TO VAN BUREN. THE RISE OF 
NEW POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE MARCH OF 

PROGRESS 287 

LI TEXAS IS ANNEXED BY THE UNITED STATES 

AND WAR WITH MEXICO RESULTS 292 

LII MORE RICH TERRITORY FOR THE UNITED 

STATES. PEACE WITH MEXICO 299 

LIII THE MORMONS IN UTAH 305 

LIV SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 310 

LV STORM CLOUDS GATHER. TROUBLE IN KANSAS 317 
LVI THE UNSHEATHING OF THE SWORD OF WAR . 323 

LVII ABRAHAM LINCOLN 330 

LVIII THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IS BEGUN 341 

LIX THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN AND ITS CONSE- 
QUENCES 350 

LX LINCOLN AND LEE 356 

LXI THE WAR IN THE WEST 363 

LXII DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION 370 

LXIII THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM. SOME NAVAL INCI- 
DENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 378 

LXIV THE SLAVES ARE DECLARED FREE. SOME CON- 
FEDERATE SUCCESSES 384 

LXV GETTYSBURG 392 

LXVI IN THE WEST. THE FALL OF VICKSBURG . . .398 
LXVII THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS AND THE 

SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 405 

LXVIII THE CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION . . . .414 

LXIX THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 425 

LXX AFTER THE WAR 433 

LXXI THROUGH SIX ADMINISTRATIONS. 1868 TO 1893 . 440 

LXXII AMERICAN EXPANSION 447 

LXXIII WAR WITH SPAIN 452 

LXXIV THE END OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR . . 460 
LXXV CONCERNING THE ADMINISTRATION OF FOUR 

PRESIDENTS: McKINLEY TO WILSON . . . .465 

LXXVI HOW THE DREAM OF COLUMBUS HAS BEEN MORE 

THAN REALIZED 473 

LXXVII THE RELATION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE 

GREAT WAR 479 

CONCLUSION 483 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Then Columbus shook out the beautiful red and gold flag of 

Spain and took possession of the island" . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

"On the 23rd of December the Pilgrims landed at 'the corner- 
stone of a nation,' Plymouth Rock" 52 

"The Red Men answered, 'We will live in love with William 

Penn as long as the sun and the moon shall endure' " . 86 

"Pontiac described a dream in which the great spirit com- 
manded that the Indian drive 'the dogs in red' from every 
post in the country" 124! 

" 'Disperse, disperse, you rebels ! Throw down your arms 

and disperse !' " 156 

"On the 30th of April, Washington took a solemn oath to 

support the Constitution of his beloved country" . . 224 

"They saw the Shannon with the conquered Chesapeake, both 
battle-grimed and blood-stained, bearing away toward 
Halifax" 270 

"In many places the slaves were happy" 310 

"Little Abe would sit up reading half the night, by the light 

of the guttering flame of a 'tallow dip' " '334 

" 'Men,' said Lee simply, 'we have fought through the war 

together, and I have done the best I could for you' " . 424} 

"The great ship sank at once, taking to their death two 

officers and two hundred and sixty-four enlisted men" . 454 

"To the United States, immigrants flock from every land" . 478 



XI 11 



THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE BEGINNING 

MANY thousands of years ago North America was 
probably a land of perpetual snow and ice. 
There was no summer then, so there were neither 
forests nor flowers and, strangest of all, there were no 
towns and no people! But in the course of ages the 
southern part of the country shook off its frozen sleep and 
was free from the frost that had bound it. 

Later grass began to appear and at last forests of great 
trees covered the land. Beneath these trees roamed 
strange animals such as you will not find in any zoo today 
because they have disappeared off the face of the earth. 
The mastodon and the mammoth lived then, beasts so much 
stronger and larger than elephants that their tread must 
have shaken the forests ! There were also rhinoceros and 
horses with three and four toes to each foot. But long ago 
these curious creatures vanished or decreased in size and 
we might never have known of their existence had not their 
bones been discovered. The plowshare has turned up 
human bones, as well as those of animals ; and men digging 
in the earth have found rough arrowheads and tools ; so we 
know that a race of people lived in North America when 
the mastodon and the mammoth were there, although we 
have no means of telling who these people were. 

There are traces of other races who inhabited North 
America before the days of books or written history, pos- 



2 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sibly about two thousand years ago. We call them the 
Mound Builders because we know them only through the 
huge mounds they have left. These mounds are made 
usually of earth, but sometimes of brick and stone ; many 
of them are very high and they are often built in the shape 
of animals or men. One in the State of Ohio is nearty a 
thousand feet long and formed like a serpent. We can 
only guess what these mounds were intended for. Pieces 
of charred wood have been found in them, and this has led 
to a belief that they were used by priests as places of sac- 
rifice. The wood might be the remains of beacon fires or 
altar fires, and the mounds might have been built for forti- 
fications, or intended for burial places. In them have been 
found bones, carvings in stone, also pottery, silver and 
copper tools, axes, knives and chisels, as well as beads, 
bracelets and pipes; showing that the Mound Builders 
knew arts that were quite unknown to the natives of Amer- 
ica at a later time. 

It is probable that the first Europeans to visit America 
were the Norsemen. They were always bold sailors, ven- 
turing far out to sea and delighting in its risks and dangers. 
In Iceland they tell how Eric the Red was so unjustly 
treated by his neighbors that he decided to sail away and 
find a new home. For many weeks he sailed the seas, and 
in 985 reached a country which he named Greenland. 
Biarni, a friend of Eric, determined to follow him to the 
new land, so he put to sea with a few men, but not know- 
ing the course that Eric had taken, he wandered for a long 
time upon the ocean. One day he saw land — a sandy beach 
and low hills crowned with trees. But he knew it was too 
far south to be the land where Eric was living and he 
sailed past it to the north, coming finally to Greenland. 

The story he told of the land he had seen interested his 
friends; and Leif, a son of Eric, purchased Biarni's vessel 
and with thirty-five men set out on a voyage of discovery. 



IN THE BEGINNING 3 

They first came to an island that they named Helluland 
(Flat Land) and then went on to the country spoken of 
by Biarni; this Leif called Markland (Woody Land). 
Two days later they landed on an island covered with 
trees, which may have been Nantucket. They sailed up 
between the island and the mainland and landed on the 
bank of a river. Here they built huts and prepared to pass 
the winter. Finding delicious wild grapes there they 
called the place Vinland. In the spring they loaded their 
ship with wood and sailed back to Greenland. 

The next year Thorvald, Leif's brother, went to Vin- 
land and remained there through two winters. It is 
claimed that he sailed down the coast as far as the Caro- 
linas. The second summer, while coasting round Cape 
Cod, he went ashore. His party was attacked by natives 
and Thorvald was killed. 

The Norsemen seem often to have gone to Vinland after 
this, to get timber to use in barren Greenland. A story 
is told of Fredys, the cruel daughter of Eric; how when 
she was on her way to Vinland she killed her husband and 
brothers and seized the ship for herself. She was brave as 
well as cruel, for later we are told that in battle with the 
Shraellings, as the Norsemen called the natives, "she slew 
many men with her own hand." 

Another story is told of Gudrid the Beautiful who went 
with her husband Thorfin to live in Vinland, and of how 
her son Snorri was born there. 

If these legends are true, and if the Vikings of the North 
knew and lived in Cape Cod and on Rhode Island hundreds 
of years before America was dreamed of by the rest of 
Europe, it is strange that they should have forgotten their 
discoveries. They probably went home to fight in the wars 
with France and England and once in their native country 
the land beyond the sea may have seemed of little impor- 
tance. At any rate the glory of giving a new continent to 



4 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the world does not belong to the Norsemen, but to one man 
who lived in the fifteenth century. It is possible, however, 
that it was the legends of these dauntless rovers, 

"Vague legends giving no man place or name — 
Which kindled in Columbus' breast, like flame 
His dream of western lands of boundless stores." 



CHAPTER II 

COLUMBUS DREAMS OF A NEW WAY TO INDIA 

YOU have been taught that the world is round like 
an orange. But there was a time when no one 
knew the real shape of the earth, and when most 
people thought that it was quite flat with the ocean lying 
around its edges. In those days men dared to venture only 
a very httle way out into the ocean, for thej'^ were afraid 
of being lost in such a great trackless space of water. You 
see the sailors guided their ships by the position of the 
sun and the stars in the sky, and if a cloud came to hide 
the heavens from their sight, there was no way for the 
mariners to tell where they were ; so even the bravest cap- 
tains did not dare to go very far from the land that they 
knew. 

But there were wonderful stories told of the fairylike 
islands that were away in that flat ocean I The most inter- 
esting things are always those about which we are not sure. 
The sailors felt this long ago; they did not know what lay 
beyond all that they could see of the ocean, but they imag- 
ined that if they could sail far enough, they would find 
islands of gold with walls of crystal. They even had a 
story about an old giant called Mildum, whom they said 
had seen one of these imaginary islands. 

There were things, too, which made it seem that there 
truly might be land somewhere out in the Atlantic. One 
man had found a piece of curiously carved wood that had 
been washed ashore after a storm, and an old pilot had 
picked up a carved paddle that was floating on the water 



6 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

west of Portugal. These things were not like anything 
that the Europeans had ever seen before, so they felt sure 
they must have been made by some unknown race of men. 

More than four hundred years ago there was one little 
boy, in the city of Genoa, who was very much interested in 
all these tales of what might be out in the ocean. This 
boy's name was Christopher Columbus. 

Genoa is a seaport town in beautiful Italy. Columbus 
used to play down by the wharves, watching the ships en- 
tering and leaving the harbor, and he probably had many 
friends among the sailors. At any rate he was a very 
small boy when he decided that he, too, would be a sailor, 
and spend his life on the sea that he loved so well — the 
sea that might hold so many strange secrets. It is believed 
that when he was ten years old his father sent Christopher 
to the University of Pavia to learn all that could be taught 
on land about the management of ships at sea; this study 
is called navigation. Young Columbus may have studied 
in Pavia for four years, but it is certain that when he went 
home to Genoa he worked in his father's shop at combing 
wool. You may be sure that though his hands were busy 
with the wool, his thoughts were far away, and he was 
dreaming of wonderful voyages in the ships upon the sea. 
His father knew his thoughts, and he probably saw that 
the boy would make a better sailor than a wool-comber, for 
I imagine that the wool often got tangled while Columbus 
was day-dreaming ; so he was sent to sea when he was not 
yet fifteen years old, in a vessel commanded by his great- 
uncle Colombo. 

For twenty years Columbus was a sailor. During that 
time he was in many battles and he always behaved as a 
brave man should. He visited all the known ports ; but he 
was not satisfied, for he had a wonderful idea: he thought 
that men had been mistaken about the shape of the earth. 
He had studied a great deal and he believed that instead 



A NEW WAY TO INDIA 7 

of being flat the world was round, and his idea was that 
he could sail west across the Atlantic and come to land. 
He did not expect to find a new country, but he thought 
that the world was much smaller than it is, and he imagined 
that by sailing westward he could reach India sooner than 
by going the usual way. He was not afraid, because by 
this time men had something safer than the stars to guide 
them on the ocean. A stone had been found that seemed 
almost like a fairy gift, it had such wonderful properties; 
a needle brought into contact with it pointed ever afterward 
straight to the north. You can understand that if men at 
sea always knew where the north was, it became as easy for 
them to guide themselves at sea as on the land, so that the 
need to keep close to shore was gone, and the danger of 
venturing out into the unknown ocean was much less after 
the "Mariner's Compass" was discovered. 

Filled with hope and faith in his belief, Columbus tried 
to interest people in his scheme for getting quickly to 
India; but he was only laughed at and called a dreamer. 
Some weary years went by and Columbus had spent all his 
money in traveling about in the hope of finding some one 
willing to help on his plans. One day he was tramping 
along a dusty road in Spain, with his little son Diego 
beside him. It was a very warm day and the boy was so 
tired and thirsty that his father stopped at the door of the 
Convent of Santa Maria de Rabida and asked the porter 
for bread and water for the child. While they rested in 
the shade the Prior came out and saw Columbus and began 
talking with him. He became so interested in him and in 
his ideas that he kept him as a guest at the Convent and 
made arrangements for him to have an audience with King 
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. 

These Christian monarchs were busy over a great war 
with the Moors, and it was not until the end of the year 
1491 that they had time to think of Columbus and his 



8 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dreams. They then summoned him to their camp outside 
the city of Granada, which they were besieging. The 
kind-hearted Queen, hearing how poor Columbus was, sent 
him money to buy clothes that were suitable to wear at 
court. At last his chance had come and he told the King 
and Queen all about his wonderful idea ; but he demanded 
great things. He was so sure that he could reach India by 
the west that he said he must be made Admiral and Viceroy 
of all the new seas and countries that he should discover 
and have one-tenth of all the gains. His demands were 
laughed at and he was sent away from the Spanish Court. 

But he had friends who were influential with the Queen 
and they had faith in him, so they told Queen Isabella 
more about the scheme and how fine it would be to get 
more quickly to India, to the land where the ivory and 
precious stuffs came from, until it is said that she cried 
out, "I will undertake the enterprise for my crown of Cas- 
tile and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary 
funds 1" 

Poor Columbus had ridden sadly away on his mule, but 
now a messenger was sent to bring him back to the Queen 
and it was settled that he should undertake one of the 
greatest voyages that the world has ever known. 

Before Columbus set out on this voyage. Queen Isabella 
appointed his son, Diego, page to Prince Juan, with an 
allowance for his support. This was an honor usually 
granted only to the sons of persons of rank and it shows 
how thoughtful the Queen was, for she knew that unless 
Columbus could leave his boy well looked after, he would 
sail away with a heavy heart. 



CHAPTER III 

A NEW WORLD IS DISCOVERED 

ON August 3rd, 1492, three ships, the Santa Maria, 
the Pinta and the Nina left the Port of Palos 
under the command of Christopher Columbus. 
The ships were so small that no present-day sailor would 
be wilhng to try to cross the Atlantic in one of them. 
They were not very much larger than one of the life-boats 
that our great steamers carry on board, only of course they 
were of different shape and very different appearance. 

The sailors who went with Columbus were not fearless 
as he was; indeed, they went on the voyage most unwill- 
ingly and only because of the Queen's orders. They 
thought their commander mad and his plan impossible of 
being fulfilled; so they did everything they could to dis- 
hearten Columbus and to make the voyage so difficult that 
he might be frightened into putting the ships about and 
returning to Spain. But in spite of every discouragement 
Columbus sailed steadily forward, and after nearly two 
months his courage was rewarded, for signs of land began 
to appear. Land birds flew about the ships. Can't you 
imagine how glad the sailors would be to see them? A 
piece of carved wood was picked up by a man on the Pinta 
and one of the sailors on the Nina saw floating on the 
water a branch of thorn with berries. Then Columbus felt 
sure that they were at their journey's end. He had of- 
fered a reward to the crew of the ship which first sighted 
land; and at two o'clock of the morning of Fridaj^ Octo- 
ber 12th, 14)92, the men on the Pinta fired a gun, the signal 



10 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that land was to be seen, llodrige Triana, a sailor on 
the Pinta, was the first to see the New World. 

The ships lay to and all waited impatiently for morn- 
ing. Daj^light came at last and about six miles away 
there was seen an island thickly covered with trees and 
with crowds of natives running up and down the shore. 
Small boats were lowered and Columbus, carrying the 
royal standard of Castile, and JNIartin Pinzon and his 
brother, each bearing a flag with a green cross, were rowed 
to the shore to the sound of music. 

The bewildered natives of the island thought the white 
men were gods and they watched in wonder as Columbus 
stepped on to the beach, the others following, and knelt 
down and kissed the ground with tears and prayers of 
thanksgiving. Then Columbus stood up, shook out the 
beautiful red and gold flag of Spain, and drawing his 
sword took possession of the island ; that is, he said that it 
now belonged to Spain, and he called it San Salvador. 

Columbus never realized that it was a new country he 
had reached; he always thought that the beautiful island 
he had discovered was off the coast of Asia. It was not 
until after he was dead that men knew that what he had 
found was the Bahama Islands, off the coast of America. 

When the sailors who had made this great voyage of dis- 
covery so difficult for Columbus, saw that they had really 
reached land and that their leader was not mad after all, 
they were ashamed of their conduct. They thronged 
around Columbus, kissing his hands and asking forgive- 
ness. The natives, too, kissed Columbus and bowed down 
before him, for they still thought he must be some great 
white god. They told him, with signs, of land to the west 
and south. So Columbus put to sea again and found an- 
other island more beautiful than the first, where birds of 
brilliant colors never ceased to sing and where clear streams 
and rivers flowed into the sea. This island is now called 



A NEW WORLD IS DISCOVERED 11 

Cuba and is off the coast of Florida. From island to 
island the three ships sailed, seeing strange and interesting 
things. In Cuba the sailors saw for the first time potatoes 
and tobacco. 

At last Columbus wanted to return to Spain to tell the 
Queen of all he had seen ; so the ships were turned toward 
home, and after weathering terrible storms they safely 
reached the Spanish harbor of Palos just seven months 
after their departure. 

The people hailed the ships with great excitement, and 
the journey of Columbus and his followers from the coast 
to the court was like a procession. The roads were lined 
with villagers who gazed in wonder at the six natives whom 
Columbus had brought home with him. Never had the 
people seen such strange looking men as these, painted in 
their savage fashion, and decorated with ornaments of pure 
gold. Then there were forty parrots and other birds of 
brilliant coloring to marvel at, as well as skins of unknown 
wild animals, and strange plants. Columbus rode on 
horse-back, a proud and splendid figure, with his long gray 
hair and air of calm dignity. The King and Queen rose 
to meet him when he reached their presence, and as he 
stooped to kiss their hands they bade him be seated, a very 
great honor in that proud Spanish Court. 

Not Spain alone, but all the countries of the civilized 
world were filled with interest and delight by the success 
of this first voyage of Columbus, and there were many men 
who longed to set out as he had done and find "New 
Worlds." Every one was now ready to believe in his opin- 
ion that the islands he had found lay off the coast of Asia in 
the Indian Seas. So they were called the West Indies; 
and they bear that name now, although we know that they 
are not near Asia. 

Other voyages Columbus made, discovering the island of 
Jamaica on his second voyage; and on the third voyage, 



12 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Trinidad. Four voyages he made in all, but his great 
work was done. He suffered shipwreck and disappoint- 
ment and finally disgrace. False accusations were made 
against hun; jealous enemies told the King and Queen 
that he used his power as Viceroy in the new land cruelly 
and for his own ends. The death of Queen Isabella, who 
had been his warm friend, ended his hope of being given 
a chance to prove that he had not been disloyal to his 
trust. The King would not listen to his defense. He was 
tricked out of money that should have been his ; his honors 
were taken from him ; and he died at last nearly friendless 
and very poor. It was a sad reward for the man who had 
led the way across "The Sea of Darkness." 

It was for other explorers to find the greatness of the 
discoveries that Columbus had made ; but there is a story 
told which shows that he was aware of what a service he 
had rendered mankind by showing the way to the west : 

He was sitting at dinner one day when a Spaniard, 
jealous of Columbus' good fortune, said that if he had not 
found the new country, some other person might easily 
have done so. Columbus said nothing, but taking an egg 
in his hand he asked if any one there could make it stand 
upright. All tried but no one could do it. Then Colum- 
bus took the egg, cracked one end of it on the table and 
stood it up. What he meant was that a thing done once 
was easy enough to do again; and so it proved. After 
Columbus had shown them the way to the New World, 
there were many men ready to "follow the leader." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE VOYAGE OF THE CABOTS AND OF AMERICUS 
VESPUCIUS 

ONE of the most important explorers who followed 
the example of Columbus was John Cabot. He 
was a merchant of Bristol, England, although, 
like Columbus, he was an Italian by birth. He set out at 
his own expense, but by permission of the English King, 
in May, 1497. He took with him his son Sebastian and 
a crew of eighteen sailors. By the end of June they 
reached Newfoundland, but they thought it was China. 
In July they were home again, telling His Majesty, Henry 
VII, of their discovery; and that worthy King is said to 
have given as a reward to "him that found the new isle" 
the sum of ten pounds! 

In 1498 Sebastian Cabot sailed again from England and 
reached, not an island this time, but Labrador, on the 
American continent. He was much disappointed when 
he found himself in a land of great cold and where, instead 
of trees and flowers such as Columbus described, he could 
see nothing but ice and snow ; nor could he understand why 
this land should be so cold, for it was in the same latitude 
as England, and Cabot reasoned that it should have the 
same pleasant climate. He had never heard of the Gulf 
Stream and so did not know, as we do, that the western 
shores of northern Europe are kept warm and saved from 
perpetual winter by a great river of hot water flowing be- 
tween banks of cold water eastward from the Gulf of 
Mexico. 

13 



14 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Driven south by the cold, Cabot sailed down the coast as 
far as what is now known as Virginia, claiming the whole 
country for the English King. A third voyage he made 
when he explored Hudson Bay, but the accounts he gave 
of the "New World" had much in them about hardship, 
cold, and savage Indians, so that men in England did not 
care to leave their own pleasant homes to venture into an 
uncertain wilderness. It was long years after Cabot's 
death before much attention was paid by the English to 
the great possessions he had gained for them in the west. 

Another Italian who went on a voyage of discovery was 
Americus Vespucius. He was born in Florence, but, like 
Columbus, he set out on his expedition from Spain. It 
was in 1499 that he sailed, and the first land that he came 
to was Venezuela (or Little Venice). It must have been 
a curious village that he saw! He gave it the name that 
it bears because it reminded him of the Italian city of 
Venice; but it was an unfriendly place. There were forty- 
four houses, all built upon tree-trunks that were driven 
into the water, and these houses were connected bj'- draw- 
bridges. Vespucius and his men would have liked to visit 
the queer village ; but the Indians who lived there sent out 
warriors in canoes to shoot arrows at the ship of the 
strangers, and Vespucius had to order the guns to be fired 
to frighten them away. He dared not land, but sailed on 
farther south until he found a more friendly tribe of In- 
dians, who treated him and his men with great kindness. 

Vespucius made many voyages to the New World, and 
he was probably the first person to realize that this great 
land to which Columbus had found the way was neither 
Asia nor Africa, but a countrj^ of itself. He wrote a 
letter to a friend in Florence giving an account of his voy- 
ages and of the strange places he had seen. This letter 
was printed, and a great many people read it with interest, 
until every one began to talk about the land of Americus 



THE CABOTS AND VESPUCIUS 15 

Vespucius, and so at last it came to be spoken of as the 
land of Aniericus or America. 

It may seem unfair that this new country was not called 
after Christopher Columbus, since he was its undoubted 
discoverer; but America took its name by chance and not 
by design. The continent itself is not named after Co- 
lumbus, but in Canada there is an immense tract of country 
known as British Columbia, and America has mountains, 
rivers, and towns that preserve the name of the great 
explorer. The United States is often spoken of as Co- 
lumbia; and in the America of to-day, on legal holidays, 
thousands of children may be heard singing a song that 
besins : 



'&' 



'O Columbia, the gem of the ocean. 
The home of the brave and the free, 
The shrine of each patriot's devotion, 
A world offers homage to thee ! " 



CHAPTER V 

THE STORIES OF PONCE DE LEON, FERDINAND DE SOTO, 
AND VASCO DE BALBOA 

THERE was a Spaniard named Ponce de Leon who 
was much interested in all that he could learn of 
the great New World. He sailed with Columbus 
on his second voyage and was made governor of the island 
of Porto Rico. There he lived contentedly enough for a 
time ; but at last he began to grow old and to sigh for the 
years that were gone. While he was making himself 
miserable thinking of his vanished youth and wishing it 
back, a story was told to him by some of the natives of Porto 
Rico that gave him a new hope in life. They said that 
somewhere among the Bahama Islands there was a wonder- 
ful fountain of everlasting youth, and that whosoever 
should bathe in and drink of the water of this fountain 
would be j^oung again, no matter what his age. 

When Ponce de Leon heard the story, and saw that the 
Indians believed it, he made up his mind to go in search 
of this marvelous fountain himself. He was a rich man, 
so he had no difficulty in buying three ships and getting 
sailors to man them for a voyage. He sailed for some time 
among the islands searching for the magical fountain; and 
one beautiful Easter morning, in the year 1512, he beheld 
an unknown shore of what might well have been Fairyland, 
it was so lovely. Never had he dreamed of so charming 
a country; gorgeous flowers carpeted all the ground, and 
giant trees spread sheltering branches above them. De 
Leon thought that this must surely be the land of the 

16 



DE LEON, DE SOTO, AND BALBOA 17 

Fountain of Youth. He called the new country Florida, 
because it was a land of flowers, and because he had dis- 
covered it on Easter Sunday, which is known to Spaniards 
as Pascua Florida (Flowery Easter) . Long he searched 
for the fountain of his dreams, but found it not. The 
foolish old man saw many strange and beautiful sights, but 
nowhere did the Fountain of Perpetual Youth gush out 
to meet his need. 

Ponce de Leon tried to found a colony in Florida ; but 
the Indians attacked him, killed many of his men, and 
drove those that remained to their ships. He himself was 
wounded by a poisoned arrow, and lived only long enough 
to be carried back to Cuba. 

In 1538, Ferdinand de Soto led a company of six hun- 
dred men from Spain to the west, where they were eager 
to discover new lands and to possess themselves of easily 
gained fortunes. These adventurers landed on the coast 
of Florida in 1639 and began to march through the wil- 
derness. They were a splendid company, for most all of 
the six hundred were Spanish noblemen and they traveled, 
as befitted their rank, in glittering armor, and with flags 
flying and music sounding to cheer them on. Danger was 
a joy to them, for they were brave ; but they were cruel too, 
for they took many Indians prisoners, seeing no reason 
why these poor natives should not be their slaves since they 
were heathen. At first the Indians were inclined to be 
friendly, but the harshness of the Spaniards made them 
cruel in their turn, so that De Soto had many battles to 
fight and heavy losses to bear. 

He led his company slowly forward, intent on finding 
some wonderful city to plunder. Imagination whispers 
strange tales to men. These Spanish adventurers had 
dreamed of a city that was so rich that its king, or high 
priest, was sprinkled from head to foot with gold-dust, as 
a miller is sprinkled with flour. They called this city of 



18 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

their imagination "El Dorado," which means "The city of 
the Gilded One." If once they could find it, De Soto and 
his men felt that their troubles would be forever at an end. 

Their wanderings brought them at last to a mighty river, 
which the Indians called the Mississippi. Truly it was 
more beautiful than any fabled wonder. The river was 
about a mile in width, and its great mass of water, sweeping 
grandly toward the sea, was a magnificent sight. The 
Spaniards built boats and crossed the broad stream, feeling 
sure that luck must be waiting for them on the western 
shore. But as they went on they only met with fresh dis- 
appointments. Food became ver}'- scarce and hardship 
and suffering grew worse day by day. Discouraged and 
worn out with fever, De Soto died. His soldiers buried 
him beneath the waters of the great river that he had dis- 
covered; and then they made rude boats for themselves 
and those who were left floated down the Mississippi on 
their way to Cuba. 

Three hundred unhappy men were all that remained 
of the company that had set out so fearlessly from Spain, 
They had found no gold and they returned empty-handed 
of treasure ; but we do not think their explorations had been 
in vain, for they had found the great "Father of Waters," 
they had seen the Mississippi ! 

It was a Spaniard, too, who had the glory of being the 
first European to see the Pacific Ocean. This was Vasco 
Nunez de Balboa. He was a bold fellow, but cruel and 
dishonest; the spirit of adventure had led him from Spain 
to the New World and he had lived in Hispaniola — now 
Haiti — until he got very heavily in debt ; then, as he could 
not pay his bills, he ran away. He had no money to buy 
his passage on a sea-going vessel; but that did not worry 
him. He hid himself in an empty cask on board a ship 
that was just about to sail out of the harbor. When the 
vessel was far out at sea, Balboa came out of his hiding- 



DE LEON, DE SOTO, AND BALBOA 19 

place. The captain, Enisco, was very angry when he saw 
the unwelcome passenger and said that he should be put 
ashore on the first desert island that the ship sighted and 
be left there to starve. 

Before this threat could be carried out a di'eadful storm 
arose and the vessel was dashed to pieces on the coast of 
Darien — which we know better today as the coast of Pan- 
ama. The country was strange to the captain, but Balboa 
had been there before and he said he knew of an Indian 
village not very far inland where food and shelter could 
be found. 

The Indians of Darien, however, had had white guests 
before and they had no taste for more Spanish cruelties; 
so the shipwrecked men were welcomed with arrows, and 
to get what food they needed meant a hard fight with the 
natives. Balboa fought so boldly that the sailors said he 
made a better leader than their captain; this pleased the 
crafty fellow, because he saw a chance of taking revenge 
upon the man who had threatened to leave him to starve. 
He therefore promptly made himself captain in place of 
Enisco ; and a cruel leader he proved. The Indians hated 
and feared him, and his own followers could feel no warmer 
regard for him than pride in his courage. 

One day an Indian came to Balboa with the story of a 
great sea that was not many days' journey distant. On 
the other side of this sea, the Indian said, there was a coun- 
try where the people were so rich that they ate and drank 
out of dishes of gold. The Red Men had made up the 
last part of the story because they hoped that it would 
induce the Spaniards to go away to find this fabled land 
and so trouble them no more. 

Greedy at the prospect of getting a rich prize, the adven- 
turers set out to find the new sea. They had to fight many 
battles with tribes of warlike Indians, but they pushed 
forward until they had crossed the Isthmus of Darien. 



20 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

One day they came to a high mountain, and the guide said 
that from its top the great sea was visible, so Balboa 
ordered all his men to stay below and he climbed the moun- 
tain alone. Looking down on the other side he saw a vast 
body of shining water stretching away until it seemed to 
meet the sky. It was a glorious sight and Balboa, that 
hardened old sinner, went down on his knees and thanked 
God that he had been allowed to make this wonderful dis- 
covery. Then he called to his men to come up and see the 
great ocean. 

A few days later, when the explorers had made their 
way down to the shore, Balboa waded into the water wav- 
ing his sword above his head, and took solemn possession 
of "the ocean and the islands that might be in it and the 
countries that bordered it" in the name of the King of 
Spain. This was in the year 1513. 

The French, not to be behind the Spanish and the Eng- 
lish, turned their attention to the northern part of the New 
World, where the great fisheries of Newfoundland at- 
tracted them. 

It was a Frenchman who first sailed up the St. Lawrence 
River. After several failures a French settlement was 
founded on its banks, and for a hundred and fifty years 
the French peopled Canada. 

Men of all nations, prompted by many different motives, 
voyaged to the west, and thus helped in making America a 
recognized part of the map. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 

BEFORE hearing any more about the white men who 
went to the west to build up a great nation, you 
may care to know something of the dark race found 
in North America. 

All the explorers met with Indians, so called by Colum- 
bus in a letter after his discovery, when he thought that 
the people he had seen belonged to India. They were, for 
the most part, tall and powerful men, with copper-colored 
skin and hazel eyes ; men with high cheek bones and black, 
coarse hair, they were unlike the Europeans in every way. 
Columbus and Cabot called them savages, and such they 
were if judged by the white man's standard ; but they lived 
in a savage land where wild beasts and untamed nature 
made men like themselves. The Indians, however, were 
poets as well as savages, for they lived so close to the heart 
of nature that they imbibed much that was beautiful and 
mysterious. We, today, owe them a debt of gratitude for 
the names which they bestowed upon stream and hill, lake 
and district, for those "... natural breaths, sounds of 
rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, 
syllabled to us for names, Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monon- 
gahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, 
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla- 
Walla. . . ." ^ 

When interpreted, the Indian names are as poetic in 
meaning as they are musical. For instance, Ohio means 

1 Starting from Pcmmanok, by Walt Whitman. 

21 



22 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"Fair to look upon" — a name as appropriate to the beauti- 
ful river which bears it, as is 3Iissouri, meaning "Big 
Muddy," to a turbid western stream. The fanciful spirit 
of the people is best shown, however, in the pretty imagery 
with which they described the wonders of the sky. The 
rainbow was known to them as "The Heaven of Flowers," 
and the milky-way they called "The Pathway of Ghosts," 
while they spoke of the Northern Lights as "The Dead 
Dance of the Spirits." 

The Indians were wonderfully learned in woodcraft and 
in the difficult arts of hunting and trapping. Had it 
not been for their help the white men, in their ignorance 
of these things, might not have been able to penetrate into 
the untracked wilderness of America. 

An Indian village was no more than a camp — simply 
a great many tents or wigwams collected near good fishing 
or hunting grounds ; for the Red Men never stayed long in 
one spot. They wandered from place to place, taking 
their villages with them. They were mighty hunters of 
the buffalo, of the deer, goat, sheep and bear. They fol- 
lowed the moose, or fished in the lakes. Theirs was a dan- 
gerous as well as a roving life, for they had no weapons 
more powerful that bows and arrows; so because it was 
less hazardous when several men hunted together, and be- 
cause man is a friend-loving creature, the Indians lived and 
traveled in companies which we call tribes. 

The name of a tribe usually had reference to some pecu- 
liarity of the people who bore it. One tribe was called 
Assinniboin, which means Stony, because the people of 
that tribe cooked their food on heated stones. Another 
tribe of Indians, who at one time lived in a part of the 
country where the soil was deep and black, earned for 
themselves the name of Siksika, or Blackfeet, because their 
moccasins were perpetually dark with mud. 

The head man of a tribe was called a Chief; he was se- 



THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 23 

lected as leader because he was a particularly daring hunter 
and was wise in the knowledge of the forest, the habits of 
animals and birds and the cunning of warfare. His wis- 
dom he gained, not as men do to-day, through teachers and 
from books, but 

"In the bird's-nests of the forest. 
In the lodges of the beaver, 
In the hoof-prints of the bison, 
In the eyrie of the eagle." ^ 

War played an important part in an Indian's life. 
Quarrels arose between tribes over hunting, or about the 
rights of fishing or camping grounds, and as the savage 
knew no way of settling an argument except by blows, 
there were frequent and bloody encounters. 

These Indians were a brave people, for although they 
thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, the 
smallest Indian child would not cry out at pain, because to 
bear suffering calmly was the ideal of primitive courage. 
Death had no terror for the Red Men; for they believed 
that a bold warrior, when he died, simply passed over to 
"The Happy Hunting Ground," where he lived forever. 
The Indians, however, had no religion, as we understand it ; 
although each tribe held ideas as to the creation of the 
world and had some sort of conception of a Mighty 
Being, or Great Spirit, who held the stars in the Heavens 
and saw to the going down and the coming up of the sun. 

In times of peace, their day's hunting over, the Indians 
would gather round a camp-fire, while the very oldest man 
of the tribe repeated the stories and traditions of his people. 
There, with the leaping flames dancing among the shad- 
ows, with the weird hoot of an owl breaking sharply across 
the stillness, or the long-drawn cry of some wild beast 
echoing uncannily through the forest, the little dark- 

1 From Longfellow's Hiawatha. 



24 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

skinned boys and girls listened eagerly to the sing-song 
voice of the wise old man, as he told of great wars, of 
miohtv hunters, or of the time before man was. Thus 
history and legend were passed on from generation to 
generation; so that many a curious story has been pre- 
served to this day. Would you hear how the Blackfeet 
Indians accounted for the beginning of the world ? 

In the days when the sun was young, they said, there 
was nothing but water, and the Old ^lan (a friend of the 
Great Spirit) sat upon a log in the midst of it. For many 
moons he sat there thinking, and at last he decided that 
there must be something mider the water. To find out 
what that something was, he sent fom* animals, which sat 
besides him on the log, down into the flood. The last to 
disappear was the muskrat, and he alone returned. In his 
mouth he brought some mud, which the Old Man took and 
worked between his fingers, molding it into a ball. As he 
worked with it, the mud ball grew and grew, imtil it was 
so large that the Old ^lan could not hold it; so he threw 
it into the water where, still grooving, it flattened out, 
like a great deer-skin. At last it was big enough for 
the Old ^lan to stand upon; so stepping into the middle of 
it, he lifted his pet wolf from his shoulder and deposited it 
upon its feet. The happy animal ran hither and thither, 
and wherever it stepped its footprints sank deep into the 
soft mud. As the mud world continued to grow, these 
footmarks became valleys and ravines ; and where the wolf 
had failed to step, plains and mountains appeared. The 
angTy water rushed in to fill up some of the footprints, 
and thus the lakes were made. 

^^^■len the Old ^lan saw that the world was finished, he 
made some women to five in it; but the first he made were 
not satisfactory, because their mouths opened up and down 
instead of across their faces, so he threw them away and 
cut out new ones. He next made some men, to whom he 



THE NORTH A3IERICAX INDIANS 25 

gave bows and arrows and taught hunting. Afar off on 
the prairie they saw some animals which the Old ^lan told 
them to shoot; but they were afraid; so, grasping an arrow, 
the Old Man fitted it to a bow and pointed it at one of the 
distant animals. It dew so swiftly and surely that the 
beast was seen to fall. "There," said he; "those are buf- 
falo and they are food for you." 

Soon the hunters saw other animals, quite unlike the buf- 
falo, and having become brave they wanted to shoot them 
also; but the Old ]Man said, "You must go out alone 
and capture one each." The men, however, hung back 
with a strange new fear upon them: so the Old ]Man was 
himself obliged to go forth to catch one of the animals. 
Having brought it back he presented it to a man, saying, 
'"This is a woman to be a wife to you." After that all the 
men went out, and each caught a wife for himself; and that 
is how the world began in the days when the sun was young. 

We, with oiu* intricate civilization, can scarcely appre- 
ciate the wonderful freedom of the Indian's life. His liv- 
ing arrangements were marvelously simple. His house, 
or wigwam, was fashioned out of skins or bark. A com- 
mon type of Indian dwelling was made of buffalo hides 
sewed together and set up in the form of a tent. It was 
held in shape by twenty or thirty pine poles (about twenty- 
five feet high) , which were driven into the ground. At the 
top of the tent an opening was left, large enough to let 
the smoke escape if there was a fire inside the wigwam, 
and to let in the hght when the flap door was closed. On 
the hides that formed the walls of a dwelling, there were 
usually drawn crude pictures representing the famous 
deeds of the imnates, and it was no uncommon thing for a 
warrior to decorate his home with the scalp-locks of the 
enemies he had slain in battle! 

A Chief's tent was always laro-er and more ornamented 
than those of the others of a tribe. The pictures on its 



26 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

walls were sometimes elaborated with dyed porcupine 
quills and with shells. A wigwam was not divided into 
rooms ; it contained but one apartment. The Indians slept 
on the ground, with mats and skins for bedding. Their 
houses boasted of almost no furniture. The cooking uten- 
sils used among some of the tribes were wooden vessels, 
made with infinite labor by burning and scraping out blocks 
of wood, with the help of shell tools or sharp stones. A 
few tribes were skilled in the making of pots of earthen- 
ware; while others cut their vessels out of soapstone. 
Where only wooden bowls were available, the people were 
obliged to practise a kind of cookery that would leave 
these bowls unburned. The vessels were filled with water 
which was heated by having red-hot stones plunged into it ; 
then whatever was to be cooked was put into the water. It 
must have been a long, tedious process. Vessels of stone 
and pottery could be set over the fire, and many a savory 
stew they must have held ; although we might have objected 
to the general lack of salt, for only a few Indians appre- 
ciated the virtue of the white crystals that they procured 
from the salt springs. Most of the tribes seasoned their 
cooking with leaves of different sorts. They were well 
versed in the knowledge of herbs and roots, and in the 
summer time they feasted off berries and wild fruits. 

The Indians had no ovens, but they roasted sweet corn, 
squashes and different kinds of roots in the ashes, and they 
broiled fish and meat deliciously on sticks laid high above 
the fire. 

The Red Men were too restless to make good farmers, 
yet some of them did raise Indian corn, beans, squashes 
and tobacco. For tilhng the ground they had implements 
made of deer's horn or turtle shell. They had no iron 
tools at all, but it is remarkable how much they accom- 
plished with the rude tools at their command. 

As we use money, the Indians used strings of wampum. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 27 

It was made of dyed quills, of bits of stained wood, or from 
the thick blue parts of clam shells worked down into beads. 
Besides being the currency of the tribes, wampum was used 
as pledges in solemn transactions. WTien war was de- 
clared black wampum belts, signifying unity, were given 
by messengers to those allies who agreed to fight. When 
treaties of peace were concluded, belts of white wampum 
v/ere given and accepted as tokens of amity. 

The ingenuity of the Red Men was especially noticeable 
in their dress, which was often beautiful and always pic- 
turesque. It was made of soft skins or furs, embroidered 
with patterns in gaily colored bird feathers or in shell de- 
signs. On his feet the Indian wore moccasins of deer-skin, 
that had the advantage of making no sound. In many of 
the tribes the women wore their hair short, while the men 
let theirs grow as long as possible, sometimes splicing hair 
that was not their own on to their heads to make a greater 
show. When the long coarse hair was oiled with bear's 
fat and stuck full of feathers, an Indian Brave thought 
himself truly well dressed ! To us, this sounds absurd, but 
the Red Man had so much native dignity that no matter 
how grotesque was his get-up, he seldom appeared ridicu- 
lous. 

When on the war-path, an Indian warrior wore nothing 
but a loin cloth; he painted his face as hideously as possible, 
so that the very sight of him would strike terror to his foes ; 
and his naked body he oiled until it shone — a useful maneu- 
ver, because in hand-to-hand combat an Indian who slipped 
through his opponent's fingers like an eel was a difficult 
person to capture. 

On the eve of a battle it was customary for all the war- 
riors of a tribe to gather together for a feast, after which 
they held a "war dance" that usually lasted the night out. 
This was a truly savage ceremony, centering around a 
painted post which was driven into the ground for the occa- 



28 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sion. While the Braves leaped and circled, brandishing 
their tomahawks and making the night awful with their 
shrieks and cries, a dreadful din was kept up by their 
friends and relations, who beat their hands together, and 
whooped in excited sympathy. With the first sign of 
morning, however, all signs of orgy disappeared and the 
stealthy Indians set out to battle with the quiet cunning of 
forest-born creatures. 

The weapons used by the Red JMen were made with 
expert skill. Bows were fashioned out of bone or suitable 
wood, and the arrows were made of ashwood, tipped with 
shell or stone. In a quiver of panther or otter skin, a man 
always carried, besides the ordinary arrows for use in hunt- 
ing, arrows dipped in poison, to be used against his foes. 
The best shields were made of skin taken from the neck 
of a buffalo; this was smoked and so hardened with glue 
from the buffalo's hoof that it was practically impene- 
trable. 

The Indian women helped to make the weapons, and 
they could use them quite as well as their lords and masters. 
They were of a splendid type, these native women, strong 
and lithe, brave and industrious. They made excellent 
mothers, for they were most painstaking in the bringing 
up of their children, and careful to instil into them the 
principles that went to the making of a good Indian. 

For the first few months of his life an Indian baby, or 
papoose, was strapped into a straight basket and carried on 
his mother's back. Thus was he kept safe, with his limbs 
in good position and his back supported, while his mother's 
hands were left free to accomplish her daily tasks. His 
name he took from the first object that his mother noticed 
after his birth; but the name of a single individual was 
often changed several times during his life; for if a boy 
excelled in some feat of strength or courage, his complacent 
friends honored him with a name descriptive of his deed. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 29 

A famous runner might be called Swift-Foot, or a gen- 
erous lad be known as Kind-to-His-Enemy. The names 
of girls were more often an indication of some spiritual 
grace than of a valorous deed. Among Indian maidens 
there occurred such names as Morning-Star, Happy- 
Moon, and White- Antelope, the last representing the In- 
dian idea of the womanly virtues — white stood for purity, 
and antelope signified gentleness. 

There were many different tongues spoken among the 
Indians. Each tribe had its own dialect; yet there seems 
to have been enough likeness in their languages to make 
it possible for them to understand one another, so that 
when members of friendly tribes met, they were able to 
talk together. 

The Red Men were inveterate smokers. Smoking was 
more than a habit with them ; it was a kind of rite. When 
a stranger entered a village, a pipe was presented to him 
as a mark of welcome. If the pipe was withheld, it was 
a sign of hostility. When peace was established between 
tribes, it was the custom of the chief men of each tribe to 
seal their compact by smoking a Pipe of Peace; that is 
a pipe that was especially reserved for such occasions 
and from which each party to the peace agreement took a 
solemn whiff. Among all the Indian nations this was rec- 
ognized as a binding ceremony and great care went to the 
carving of beautiful pipes. The finest specimens were 
made of red soapstone taken from a quarry in the district 
now known as Minnesota. This particular quarry was 
neutral property, because the people half believed that the 
red stone was the flesh of their ancestors. They held, 
therefore, that it behooved them to keep the peace in the 
vicinity of so sacred a place as this quarry, which was a kind 
of monument to their common origin. Many curious tales 
were told about the mysterious pipe-stone and its pecu- 
liarly soothing influence on man. In Hiawatha, Long- 



30 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fellow has given us one of the most interesting of these 
legends : 

"On the Mountains of the Prairie, 
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry, 

Gitche Manito, the mighty, f 

He the Master of Life, descending. | 

On the red crags of the quarry, | 

Stood erect, and called the nations, ) 

Called the tribes of men together. ) 

From the red stone of the quarry ' 

With his hand he broke a fragment. 
Molded it into a pipe-head. 
Shaped and fashioned it with figures ; 
From the margin of the river 
Took a long reed for a pipe-stem. 
With its dark green leaves upon it; 
Filled the pipe with bark of willow ; 
With the bark of the red willow ; 
Breathed upon the neighboring forest, 
Made its great boughs chafe together. 
Till in flame they burst and kindled; 
And erect upon the mountains, 
Gitche Manito, the mighty, 
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe, 
As a signal to the nations." 

Each Indian tribe took some animal for its symbol, or 
"totem." It might be a bear, a wildcat, or a turtle — any- 
thing that pleased the fancy — and it was imagined that the 
spirit of the animal chosen could watch over and protect 
a whole nation. 

These Red Men had very few laws; it was their super- 
stitions that ruled them. They were afraid of what they 
called "medicine." Anything that they did not under- 
stand was medicine (or magic) ; and next to the Chief, 



THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 31 

the Medicine-man was the most important person in a 
tribe, for he was both a doctor and a demon. He was be- 
lieved to have wonderful powers of healing, and he was ac- 
credited with bringing evil upon men by means of charms 
and spells. He wore a hideous dress and when he was 
engaged in the dances that were intended to call down 
magic from the sky, he wore a mask so ugly that it alone 
was enough to frighten the worst evil-doer. 

In their play the Indians were almost as proficient as 
they were in the more serious businesses of life. They ran 
races, played ball, and shot at targets. The game of La 
Crosse originated with them, and they were adepts in 
tobogganing and snow-shoeing. On the water they were 
perfectly at home. Every boy or girl could manage his or 
her own canoe as well as their elders could handle the big 
war canoes that held from twenty to forty persons. These 
canoes were graceful boats, and very light so that they 
could be carried over land. They were made either by 
stripping off the bark from a birch tree and fastening it, 
whole, round a frame of cedar wood, or by burning out a 
log and scraping away the charred parts until the wooden 
shell was sufficiently deep and rightly shaped. 

The Indians kept a calendar by a system of notched 
sticks; and they had descriptive names for the months, 
such as The Moon When the Geese Come, The Moon 
When the Geese Go Away, and The Moon of the Big 
Snow. Indeed, they were fanciful as well as savage, these 
dark-skinned people among whom the white men came to 
make their homes. Could the Europeans have brought 
with them only Christianity, knowledge of science and the 
habits of regular industry, the history of the Indians might 
have been very different; but the newcomers' gift of "fire- 
water" (strong di-ink) was poison to the Red Men, and 
the dishonest transactions of many of the strangers con- 
fused the Indian's idea of the white man's faith. There 



32 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

were years of bitter struggle between the two races ; there 
was injustice on both sides, for which all suffered; but 
with the coming of the Europeans the Red Men were 
doomed to go ; their camp-fires and forest paths had to give 
place to towns and highroads. There was no longer any 
need of a savage people in a land that was tamed. 

To-da}^ the Indians have gone, melting like snow be- 
neath the warmth of spring sunshine, and only a remnant 
of them are left in the reservations, or tracts of country 
that the Government has set aside for their use, but — 

"The memory of the Red Men, 
How can it pass away 
While their names of music hnger 
On each mount and stream and bay? " ^ 

1 From a poem by Richard Huntington. 



CHAPTER VII 

EARLY ATTEMPTS AT HOME BUILDING IN AMERICA 

IT was not until the sixteenth century that men began 
to think of Hving in America, although it had been 
the goal of fortune hunters for years. The hot- 
headed Spaniards still hoped to find great Indian cities to 
plunder; while the English sailors searched for a north- 
west passage to India and for long-dreamed-of gold 
mines; but it had not occurred to men to take out their 
families and build homes for them in the new world until 
they were driven to it by discomfort in the lands where 
they were born. 

Europe was anything but peaceful during the sixteenth 
century; the different kings were always at war with one 
another, and their subjects had to carry on their wars for 
them. A king at that time was an "absolute ruler"; that 
is, he believed that he was placed over the people by the 
will of God and that he had a perfect right to do as he 
pleased, whether it was for the welfare of his kingdom, 
or merely to satisfy his own selfishness. Now when the 
men were always away fighting in the king's quarrels, their 
affairs at home were neglected, their fields went unplanted 
and their families were hungry. Disease swept over all 
the countries of Europe as a result of bad and insuffi- 
cient food and undrained streets, while discontent and un- 
happiness were everywhere. 

One great cause of discontent was that a king, not satis- 
fied with ordering about the bodies of his subjects, thought 
he had the right to order their minds as well ; he told them 

33 



34 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

what form their religion must take, and if they refused to 
believe what he told them to believe they were punished, 
sometimes with death. But in spite of the king's so-called 
"divine right" to think for them, men were busy thinking 
for themselves. They began to understand that the king 
was made for the people; not the people for the king. 
They began to read the Bible; it was a new book to them 
because the priests had never allowed them to read it for 
themselves. In it they found strength for their faith, and 
it made them more sure than ever that they must worship 
God as they thought He meant them to, rather than as the 
king commanded. 

In France there were people called Huguenots who 
wished to leave the Roman Catholic church and found a 
new church for themselves. But the king and most of his 
nobles were Catholics and they thought they were doing 
God true service by persecuting these unbelievers, or 
heretics. Rather than have them establish their new 
church, they were burned or shot without mercy. One 
friend the Huguenots had among the nobles, however, 
was Admiral Coligny, who sympathized with them and 
was willing to give all his wealth to protect them. It was 
this nobleman who thought of sending them to America, 
where they might be able to live and worship God in their 
own way without fear of persecution. He used his own 
money and sent out a company of unhappy people to 
find homes and peace in the New World. 

The Huguenots landed in May, 1562, on the banks of 
the beautiful St. Johns River in Florida. The Indians 
received them with kindness and they thought that at last 
their troubles were over. Indeed, they might have been 
very comfortable in this lovely land had not the greed 
for gold overtaken them and caused them to forget what 
they had come for ; so that instead of going quietly to work 
and making homes for themselves, they spent their time 



ATTEMPTS AT HOME BUILDING 35 

in hunting about for gold and precious stones. The re- 
sult was that when the food they had brought with them 
from France was finished and when the friendly Indians 
had no more corn to give them, they were forced to sail 
back toward France in a starving condition. They would 
have died of hunger on the way had not an English ship 
picked them up and taken them prisoners. That was the 
end of the first attempt made by the Huguenots to settle 
in America. 

Coligny decided to make a second attempt to found a 
Huguenot colony, and two years later he sent out another 
company to Florida. The Indian chief, Satournia, made 
them welcome with great ceremony. The splendor of 
the pearls and the gold ornaments that the natives wore 
made some of the Frenchmen envious; but their leaders 
were able to control them, and preparations were begun 
for the coming winter. While they worked, however, a 
great evil was drawing near them. 

News had reached Spain that the Huguenots were tak- 
ing refuge in Florida, and as the Spaniards were Roman 
Catholics themselves, they hated the Huguenots. At once 
they fitted up ships and sent them out to keep the French- 
men from landing. They were too late for that, but they 
fell upon the French fort and cruelly murdered every 
one they could find. Then they wrote a placard and put 
it up on a tree; on it they said that they had murdered 
these men "not because they were Frenchmen, but because 
they were heretics and enemies of God." 

Laudonniere, the Huguenot commander, was one of the 
few to escape and he was able to return to France with 
news of what had happened. 

The Spaniards, left in possession of the country, built 
a fort in their turn. It stood where now stands the city 
of St. Augustine, the oldest town in the United States. 

The French King, Charles IX, paid little attention to 



36 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Laudonniere's account of the Spanish massacre of the 
Huguenots: the fate of any of his subjects who were not 
Cathohcs did not interest him ; and it was some time before 
the death of the Frenchmen was avenged. 

It was a soldier, Dominique de Gourgues, who took it 
upon himself to punish the murderers of his fellow country- 
men. When the Indians saw his ships enter the mouth of 
the river they thought that more Spaniards were coming, 
and they were angry and afraid ; for the Spaniards by their 
cruelty and treachery had earned the hatred of the natives ; 
but when they found that the ships brought Frenchmen 
there was rejoicing and the Indians offered to help De 
Gourgues in his attack on the Spaniards. 

Fort Caroline was surrounded and the work of revenge 
was swift and terrible. All the Spaniards were killed, 
except a few who were taken prisoners. The other forts 
were captured and De Gourgues and the Indians were 
satisfied. 

De Gourgues found the tree where the Spaniards had 
placed the placard telling why they had murdered the 
Huguenots, and there he posted a notice of his reason for 
killing the Spaniards: "Not because they were Spaniards, 
but because they were traitors, robbers and murderers." 

You can imagine that such bloody work as this was not 
a success in planting colonies; the real business of home 
building in America had to wait to be begun by the Brit- 
ish, who have proved themselves fit to bear the hardships 
and difficulties of colonization. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SIR WALTER RALEIGH TAKES AN INTEREST IN AMERICA 

HAVE you heard of Sir Walter Raleigh, a gen- 
tleman of the English Court, and of how he first 
won his Queen's notice by an act of gallantry? 

The story goes that Queen Elizabeth was once walking 
along a street in "her town of London" when she came to 
a very muddy crossing, where she hesitated, not liking to 
get her dainty shoes soiled. A young man, seeing her diffi- 
culty, stepped forward, unclasped the velvet cloak that he 
wore and threw it in the mud for the Queen to walk upon. 
Elizabeth was so much pleased by this act of courtesy that 
she at once took him into her favor and did a great deal 
to help forward his fortunes. 

Americans owe this gallant knight much honor, for he 
had a great deal to do with awakening the interest of 
England to the advantage of having colonies in the 'New 
World. 

Sir Walter Raleigh had been in France, fighting under 
the command of Admiral Coligny; so he had heard all 
about the fate of the Huguenot settlements in Florida, 
and he had listened eagerly to the reports that the French 
sailors gave of the wonders to be found in the new coun- 
try. He was a rich man and it was very easy for him to 
get the Queen's permission to send ships to America at his 
own expense, to find out whether the tales told by the 
sailors and adventurers were true. 

In April, 1584, Raleigh sent out two vessels under the 
command of Amidas and Barlow. In July they sighted 

37 



38 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Carolinas, and keeping up the coast for a hundred and 
twenty miles they put in at a convenient harbor and took 
possession of the land in the Queen's name. 

The country was so lovely that the Englishmen thought 
they had never seen anything to compare with it, and 
they said that to live in this beautiful land would be to 
live "in the midst of some delicate garden," the fragance 
of the woods and flowers was so delicious. 

The Indians whom they met were gentle and friendly 
and glad to trade rich furs for English knives and pocket 
mirrors. 

In September Barlow and Amidas returned to Eng- 
land with news of the wealth and plenty they had found. 
Queen Elizabeth was delighted with what was told her of 
the fair and fruitful land in America and she commanded 
that it be called Virginia, that by its name men should 
always remember that it was discovered during the reign 
of the Virgin Queen of England. 

A poet of Elizabeth's time described the land of Vir- 
ginia and told of the wealth of the new country: 

"Where nature hath in store 
Fowl, venison, and fish. 
And the fruitfulPst soil 
Without your toil 
Three harvests more, 

All greater than your wish. 
And the ambitious vine 

Crowns with his purple mass 
The cedar reaching high 
To kiss the sky, 
The cypress, pine, 

And useful sassafras.'* 

The eager poet, whose name was Michael Drayton, goes 
on to encourage his countrymen to hurry to Virginia: 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH 39 

"Britons, you stay too long: 
Quickly aboard bestow you, 
And with a merry gale 
Swell your stretch'd sail 
With vows as strong 

As the winds that blow you." 

Raleigh was well pleased with his first venture and has- 
tened to get ready a second expedition. Seven ships were 
despatched, with Sir Richard Grenville in command of 
the fleet. 

The intention was that a settlement should be made on 
Roanoke Island ; but it was not carried out. The Indians 
were not friendly as they had been before. Sir Richard 
Grenville was perhaps too harsh in his treatment of them, 
and there was constant trouble between them and the Eng- 
lish. Food was very scarce and as nothing could be got 
from the Indians, Grenville went back to England to bring 
more supplies. In his absence the little colony came very 
near starvation. Just when they were nearly desperate. 
Sir Frances Drake, the great English Sea Rover, sailed 
into the harbor with twenty-three ships. He was on his 
way from the West Indies and had stopped to visit his 
friend Grenville, not knowing he was away. Drake gladly 
supplied the needs of the colonists and finally took the dis- 
couraged people home with him to England. 

Raleigh was not disheartened by this failure; for two 
years later he sent out three more ships, in charge of John 
White, who was to be governor of the colony that he was 
expected to found. But this expedition fared even worse 
than the other. Relations with the Indians were most un- 
friendly, and when the time came for the ships that had 
brought the emigrants to return to England, the colonists 
were frightened. Winter was before them; they had very 
little food and nothing to expect from the Indians but 



40 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

trouble ; so they begged Governor White to go back with 
the ships and get sui:)plies and help for them from home. 
White did not wish to leave his people; but they insisted 
upon his going. He knew the conditions that would have 
to be faced and he was sad at heart, for among those to be 
left behind was his own daughter with her husband and 
baby girl, a child born in one of the rough log houses of 
the colony and named Virginia Dare. This baby is sup- 
posed to have been the first white child born in America. 

It was three years before White was able to return to 
Roanoke ; but the delay was not his fault, nor the fault of 
Sir Walter Raleigh. The ships with supplies were 
started off at once ; but they fell in with a man-of-war from 
Rochelle and after a fight were boarded and all the sup- 
plies that they carried taken, so they were compelled to 
go back to England. Soon England's war with Spain 
took all men's thoughts and neither ships nor sailors could 
be found to carry help to the little colony in far America. 

When White did return, he found nothing but desola- 
tion ; the log houses were empty ; the colonists were gone ; 
but on a tree was carved CROATOAN. Croatoan was 
an island about fifty miles from the settlement at Roa- 
noke and the Indians who lived there had been friendly, 
so White hoped that his people were safe under their pro- 
tection. He wished to go at once to find out, but storms 
and other difficulties made that impossible, and no trace 
of the colony has ever been found. 

Raleigh did all in his power to discover what had become 
of the Enghsh men and women. He is said to have sent 
out five different times to search for them; but they had 
utterly disappeared. It has been imagined that they may 
have been adopted into some Indian tribe, in which case 
the child — Virginia Dare — may have grown up with the 
Indian maidens and learned many things that would seem 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH 41 

strange knowledge for a little white girl! But what her 
fate really was no one will ever know. 

In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold sailed to America, sent 
by some merchants of Bristol. He determined not to go 
by the Canaries and the West Indies but to voyage more 
directly — a plan that Raleigh thought very wise. He 
steered straight across the Atlantic, and after seven weeks 
reached Cape Elizabeth, on the coast of Maine. He vis- 
ited Cape Cod and there did some trading with the Indians, 
loading his ship with sassafras root, which was used in 
England for medicine. But no colony was started, be- 
cause the men who had gone out expecting to remain 
became frightened at the thought of being left behind and 
so returned home with the ship. Gosnold's report of 
America helped, however, to strengthen British interest 
in the land that had been growing familiar through Ra- 
leigh's expeditions to Virginia. 

It is true that Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts at coloni- 
zation were a failure ; but they had paved the way to suc- 
cess. For it was he who roused the attention of his coun- 
trymen to the possibilities of the new land. That Amer- 
ica does not forget the debt she owes him is shown in the 
name of the capital of North Carolina, which is Raleigh. 



CHAPTER IX 

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF 
yiRGINIA 

IN the year 1606, on the 19th of December, three 
small vessels sailed from London, carrying a hun- 
dred and five persons who were to establish the first 
permanent English colony in America. 

Queen Elizabeth was dead and James I had come to 
the throne of England. The idea of having colonies in 
America pleased him and when a company of gentlemen 
asked his permission to send out settlers to America he 
consented at once. 

The King took it upon himself to write out instructions 
for the emigrants, telling them how they were to be gov- 
erned. He said that the colony should be ruled by a 
Council ; but foolishly he put the paper bearing the names 
of the men whom he had appointed to make up this Coun- 
cil into a sealed box, with orders that it should not be 
opened until America was reached. This royal whim 
caused much trouble during the voyage, because there was 
no one in authority to check the insolence of the unruly 
members of the party, and they were by no means all men 
who were fit to govern themselves. In the company there 
were gentlemen escaping from England because of the 
heavy debts they owed, there were footmen and some 
tradesmen ; but there were very few farmers or carpenters, 
and ahnost nobodj'- who knew anything about the rough 
life in a new country, or how to make themselves com- 
fortable amid discomfort. It seemed about as unpromis- 

42 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 43 

ing a lot of men as could have been gathered together and 
sent off to found a colony. But there was one man among 
them who was to hold them all together by his courage 
and wisdom. This man was Captain John Smith. 

Smith was a young man well built and strong; he had 
been a soldier and a traveler since his boyhood and had 
known something of hardship and life in wild countries. 
On the voyage Smith was arrested by some of the men 
higher in rank than himself, who were jealous of his leader- 
ship; but when America was reached and the King's 
precious box was opened, Smith's name was found on the 
list of Councilors. He was released from arrest and was 
soon obliged to take command of the party. 

A storm had carried the ships past the spot where Ra- 
leigh's settlement had been and into the Chesapeake Bay. 
They sailed up the James River and the company landed. 
For seventeen days search was made for the most suitable 
place to build a town, and on the 13th of May the spot 
was chosen and called Jamestown, in honor of the King. 

The work of clearing the forest, felling great trees 
and making them into building material, was very difficult 
for the poor fellows who were unused to working with their 
hands ; that they could do it at all was a credit to Smith's 
management. He was a firm ruler, and it is told that 
he had to invent many kinds of punishment to keep the 
men at work and in order. It is said that he so much 
disliked the habit they had of swearing over their blistered 
hands that he had every man's oaths counted "and at night 
for every oath" he poured down the sleeve of each offender 
as many cans of water as he had used bad words during 
the day. 

Smith was wise in his treatment of the Indians. He 
paid a visit to Powhatan, the most powerful Chief of the 
neighborhood, and tried to make a friend of him. Pow- 
hatan received him courteously, although many of his 



44 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

braves were angry at the coming of the strangers into their 
country. 

In June the ships returned to England and with the 
hot days of summer real trouble began for the colony at 
Jamestown. The provisions that had been brought from 
home spoiled; the drinking water Vv-as unwholesome; and 
the great heat, combined with the hard work, was too much 
for the poor Englishmen. In less than two weeks after 
the departure of the ships "hardly ten men were able to 
stand," there was so much illness, and before autumn half 
the settlers had died. But the hot sun that proved so un- 
friendly to health, ripened the grain that had been sown 
in the spring ; the coming of cool weather brought strength 
to those who were left; and when winter came there was 
plenty of game and wild fowl to be had for food. 

When some comfort had been restored to the colony and 
as soon as the dangers of a winter sea made it unlikely 
that the settlers would try to "run away" home to Eng- 
land, Smith set out to explore the country. 

He took with him no one but Indian guides. His in- 
tention was to follow the Chickahominy River to its source ; 
but when he had been away from Jamestown only a few 
days, he was suddenly surrounded by three hundred na- 
tives, those braves who had murmured against the stran- 
gers' coming. His men were speedily put to death, as he 
would have been but for his courage and quick wit. 

Taking out his pocket compass Smith showed it to the 
Indians, pointed out its singular movements, and tried to 
explain its use. He knew some Indian words and he was 
an adept in talking "sign language," for he had spent most 
of his life in foreign lands, where it was necessarj^ for him 
to make himself understood even when he did not know 
the language of the country. The Red Men were much 
interested and he went on to tell them stories about ships 
and of how men sailed the seas. He told them, too, about 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 45 

his God and they were so astonished and bewildered by all 
these wonders that they decided to spare the white man's 
life for a time. Smith wrote a letter, while the Indians 
looked on in amazement; for writing was some "great 
magic" to them. Thej?- were sure that a man who could 
make himself understood many miles away by strange 
looking marks traced on a thin piece of birch-bark, must 
be a kind of god and they were not sure that they dared 
to kill such a mighty being. At last they determined to 
take him to Powhatan and let the Chief judge what was 
best to be done with him. 

The stern old Indian received Smith in state, with his 
people about him. He was in his winter camp, called 
Pamunkey, near what is now known as the York River; 
he wore a robe of raccoon skins and many ornaments ; but 
deep in his somber eyes there must have lurked a half fear 
of the white man, for since his last visit Powhatan had pon- 
dered deeply an old Indian prophecy which foretold the 
downfall of his race when "bearded men in floating castles" 
should come and occupy the Indians' hunting-ground. 
Powhatan was, however, a courteous host. He saw that 
his women offered the white man many kinds of food, and 
that he was comfortably lodged. It was not until after 
several days' discussion with his braves that Powhatan 
decreed that Smith must die, for his strange powers made 
him a dangerous person. 

Now Captain Smith had made one very good friend in 
the Indian village. This was Pocahontas, the daughter of 
Powhatan. She was just a human little girl who loved to 
listen to stories, and she must have been delighted to have 
the splendid English Captain come and tell her of the 
country far over the sea where little fair-haired girls and 
boys lived such a different life from that which she knew 
anything about. When Pocahontas heard that her new 
friend was to be put to death she ran to her father and 



46 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

begged him to spare the Captain's life, but her plea was 
put aside and the hour of execution came. Smith was 
bound and stretched on the ground with his head resting 
on a stone. An Indian stood behind him, ready to dash 
out his brains with a great club, when Pocahontas broke 
away from the women and rushed forward, threw herself 
between the Englishman and the raised club, and again 
begged Powhatan to spare the white man. The great 
Chief loved his little daughter, and her sorrow touched him, 
so he ordered that Smith be set free and sent back to James- 
town. 

After this the tribes of Powhatan were kind to the Eng- 
lish and helped them in many ways. Often when Poca- 
hontas went to Jamestown with presents of corn for her 
hero, Captain Smith, she would stay to play with the white 
children there. Sometimes the supple little maid per- 
suaded the English lads to make wheels of themselves by 
turning upon their hands and feet; then she would follow 
them, wheeling as they did all through the fort. When 
she was fifteen she was converted to the Christian faith 
and was baptized in the little church in Jamestown, where 
the name of Rebecca was given her. 

There was one person who rejoiced greatly when Poca- 
hontas became a Christian. This was John Rolfe, who 
loved the beautiful Indian girl and made her his wife — a 
marriage that helped to strengthen the friendship between 
Powhatan and the colonists. 

Rolfe took his wife to England, where her sweetness 
and pretty ways won much admiration. She received a 
great deal of kindness from royal personages and was 
given the title of "The Lady Rebecca," or sometimes 
"The Princess Pocahontas." But the English climate and 
the living in houses was too much for the girl who had 
grown up in the freedom and freshness of the forests ; she 
sickened and died of smallpox just before she was to have 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 47 

returned to America, and her husband had to go back to 
Virginia and bring up her little son without her. 

When Smith reached Jamestown after Pocahontas had 
saved his hfe, he found only thirty-eight persons left in the 
colony, and they were in despair; but with the return of 
their leader hope came back to them, and soon fresh ar- 
rivals from England came to fill up their numbers. The 
English made the mistake of sending to Virginia men 
who were not wanted at home; so that the subjects over 
whom Smith ruled were lazy and miserable, and had it not 
been for his splendid management the colony would have 
gone to pieces. Besides the good that he did as governor. 
Smith made many valuable discoveries about the geog- 
raphy of the new country. 

He worked with wonderful energy until he met with an 
injury that was to end his career in America. There was 
an accidental explosion of gunpowder and Smith was hurt. 
There were no good doctors in Virginia, so he was obliged 
to go to England for medical care, and he never again 
returned to the colony. At home in England he had the 
pleasure of welcoming Pocahontas when she went to Lon- 
don with her husband. The poor girl thought the Cap- 
tain was dead, so you can imagine how glad she was to 
see him again. She probably was homesick, too, for her 
own country and for her childhood friends, for when she 
saw Captain Smith she put her hands in his and begged 
him to call her ''Daughter" and let her call him "Father." 

After Smith was gone it fared badly with the James- 
town settlement. In six months' time the five hundred 
men whom he had left dwindled to sixty. But another 
good man came to take command; this was the new gov- 
ernor. Lord Delaware. Under his control the colony pros- 
pered once more. A better class of immigrants began to 
arrive in Virginia and years of peace and growth set in. 

The people learned to plant corn after the Indian fash- 



48 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ion, ''when the white-oak leaf was as big as a mouse's ear" 
and to fertihze it by putting one or two herrings in every 
hill. They became expert in cooking the corn, or maize, 
as the Indians did, in ash cakes, mush and pones. The 
settlers even learned to eat the green snake, after the 
fashion of the savages, and the land turtle became a daily 
delicacy among them. When they had learned to use the 
native food, the English took a firmer hold on America, 
because they were less dependent on what the "ships from 
home" brought them and were better able to manage for 
themselves. 

New towns and villages sprang up, roads were made 
through the forests, and the Indians were kept back. The 
settlers made one great mistake. Instead of buying the 
land from the Indians they helped themselves to what they 
wanted; this was unfair dealing and it brought its own 
punishment, for the Indians revolted, planning their at- 
tack so cunningly at one time that over three hundred 
Englishmen were killed. 

The great business in Virginia came to be the growing 
of tobacco. The plant had long been in use among the 
Indians, who thought that it had wonderful healing power. 
From them the white men learned to smoke the leaf, and 
there came to be a great demand for it in England ; so that 
the Virginia planters were kept busy and prosperous grow- 
ing and selling the new weed. For some time tobacco 
was used in the place of money in Virginia: instead of 
things costing so many cents or dollars, the price was given 
in pounds of tobacco. 

As soon as living came to be something more than a fight 
to get enough to eat, the Virginians began to think of 
education, and a college was started where both white men 
and Indians were welcomed. The English Church was 
estabhshed and the colony was divided into parishes. Vir- 



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 49 

ginia had her own parliament and a governor sent from 
England. The roots of the colony had taken hold of the 
land and English speaking people had gained their foot- 
hold in America. 



CHAPTER X 

THE MAYFLOWER CARRIES THE PILGRIMS TO NEW 
ENGLAND 

WE have now come to the story of the first people 
who went to America from England because 
they wanted liberty to worship God in their 
own way. These people were known as Separatists, for 
they thought the forms and ceremonies of the English 
Church were wrong and they wished to have a separate 
church of their own, with a different and more simple 
service. 

King James would not permit this, for he was afraid 
that if men had a church without the king at its head, 
they might soon begin to think that they could do without 
the king in other things, and so the royal power would be 
weakened. He therefore commanded that all persons 
holding services other than those allowed by the national 
church, should be severely punished. But in spite of the 
King's command, the Separatists held their meetings at 
one another's houses. They had their own ministers and 
their own church government. 

"Giants at heart they were who believed in God 
and the Bible." 

Many of their services were held at Scrooby Manor House, 
in Nottingham, the home of William Brewster. 

For some time they managed to hold their meetings 
every Sunday, going secretly to Scrooby to listen to the 
long sermons of their ministers; but their enemies found 

50 



MAYFLOWER CARRIES PILGRIMS 51 

out their secret place of worship and became so cruel in 
their interference that the Separatists decided to leave 
England and go to Holland to live, where there would be 
freedom for their religion. Their first attempt to leave 
the country was stopped and the leaders of the would-be 
emigrants were thrown into prison and a year was wasted 
before they dared try again to get to Holland. 

For their second attempt to escape the Pilgrims, as they 
were called when they began their travels, gathered on 
a lonely part of the Lincolnshire coast. The ship that 
was to bear them to Amsterdam had part of the company 
on board and a small boat was just coming back to fetch 
more passengers, when some horsemen appeared and seized 
the unfortunate people still on shore. The ship's captain 
put to sea with what passengers he had and carried them 
safely to Holland. The others followed, one at a time, as 
soon as they were free. 

It seemed as though the troubles of the Pilgrims were 
over, for the Dutch were kind to them and in no way inter- 
fered with their religion. Leaving Amsterdam they went 
to the smaller city of Leyden to live and there they re- 
mained for eleven years, from 1609 to 1620. They sup- 
ported themselves by their different trades and on Sunday 
went openly to church to hear John Robinson preach. 

But although they "lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their 
dearest country, and quieted their spirits," the Pilgrims 
were homesick for English ways and to hear the English 
tongue. The thought grew among them that they owed 
it to their children to seek a new land where they "could 
be English and yet be free," and where they could estab- 
lish their own faith. 

In July, 1620, arrangements were made for some of the 
Pilgrims to go to America. All could not go at once, for 
they had become a large company. The first instalment 
from the Leyden church was selected with Brewster, the 



52 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Elder, to lead it, and the party left Leyden in canal boats 
for Delfthaven, where they joined the ship that they ex- 
pected would carry them to the New World. 

Their vessel was the Speedwell, a Dutch ship of sixty 
tons burden which the Pilgrims intended to keep with them 
in their new home. They made a good run as far as 
Southampton, where the ship Mayflower awaited them. 
She was a somewhat larger ship than the Speedwell; but 
small enough when we think of her to-day ! The intention 
was that the two ships, between them, should carry the 
party of Pilgrims; but hardly had they set sail together 
when the Speedwell began to leak and had to put back to 
Dartmouth for repairs. A second setting out was unsuc- 
cessful; for again the Speedwell had to stop. This time 
they put into Plymouth, where the vessel was declared un- 
seaworthy and had to be abandoned. Pier passengers 
then packed into the Mayflower, which finally sailed on 
the 16th of September. 

Rough and weary was the long voj'^age to the folk upon 
the crowded little ship ; the weather was cold and stormy, 
and often the Mayflower seemed to make no headway 
against the wind and waves. On one of the most tem- 
pestuous days a little boy was born. Plis name was Pere- 
grine White; and the queer old cradle that rocked him 
is yet to be seen in Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth, among some 
other curious pieces of furniture that came from England 
in the famous Mayflower. 

While they were at sea, the Pilgrims wrote out the plans 
for the government of their colony. They acknowledged 
King James of England as their sovereign ; but they meant 
to do most of the governing without his help. They were 
to make their own laws, and every man promised to 
obey them. They chose John Carver to be their first 
governor. 

It was the 11th of November when the Mayflower 



MAYFLOWER CARRIES PILGRIMS 53 

dropped anchor in Cape Cod Bay. Winter weather was 
upon the unfortunate newcomers and the land they had 
reached was bleak and uninviting. The brave hearts of 
the Pilgrims were afraid when they first saw their new 
home, with the wilderness on one side and the ocean on 
the other I They were so long in choosing the exact spot 
for their settlement that the ship's captain threatened to 
put them all on the nearest point of land and leave them ; 
but at last a place was fixed upon, where the soil seemed 
good and where there was plenty of fresh water. 

On the 23rd of December the Pilgrims landed, stepping 
ashore on a great boulder of granite that the poet, Long- 
fellow, has called "the corner-stone of a nation"; you 
probably have heard of it as Plymouth Rock. It was so 
cold on the day of their landing that the salt-sea spray 
froze on the clothes of the people, and it is little wonder 
that many of them sickened and died that first awful 
winter. But those of the party who survived worked 
bravely and soon had a big log house built to shelter all the 
colonists until each family should be able to have a home of 
its own. The colony was called Plymouth in honor of the 
last English port that the Mayflower had touched. 

When spring came, heralded by the shell-pink blossoms 
of the trailing arbutus, it was found that nineteen houses 
were all that were needed to hold the people who were left ; 
so these were built and surrounded with a palisade. Then, 
upon a hill beside their homes, the Pilgrims built their 
church; but it was not like any church that you ever saw. 
It was built of logs and had a flat roof with six cannon 
mounted upon it ; for the building was a fort as well as a 
church. There was no bell; the people were called to ser- 
vice by the beating of a drum, and they went carrying 
their muskets with them, for the Pilgrim Fathers never 
knew when the Indians might surprise them and they had 
to be ready to protect themselves at all times. 



54 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

This is how Longfellow, in his poem, makes Captain 
Standish describe the little church and fort of Plymouth: 

"Look ! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer 
planted 

High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks 
to the purpose ; 

Steady, straightforward and strong, with irresistible 
logic, 

Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of 
the heathen. 

Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the In- 
dians ; 

Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it 
the better." 

But there was not much real trouble with the Indians at 
first. A treaty of peace was made between the settlers 
and Massasoit, the Chief of the Wampanoags. He 
promised to befriend the English and help them in war; 
while the Pilgrims agreed to see that Massasoit and his 
people had justice and right shown them. This peace 
lasted for fifty years. 

Governor Carver had died during the winter and Brad- 
ford was selected to take his place. Captain Miles Stand- 
ish was appointed to train the men of Plymouth and make 
soldiers of them so that they could protect their homes when 
it was necessary. 

Canonicus, Chief of the Narragansetts, seemed inclined 
to give trouble. He sent to Plymouth a rattlesnake-skin 
tied around a bundle of arrows. This meant, in the sign 
language of the Indians, that he was a dangerous foe 
and ready for war. But the Pilgrims could talk in sign 
language too! They stuffed the snake-skin full of gun- 
powder and shot, and returned it to the warlike Chief. 



MAYFLOWER CARRIES PILGRIMS 55 

When he saw that the white men were not afraid, the 
courage of Canonicus left him and he begged for peace. 

In the autumn of 1621 a vessel bringing thirty-five 
settlers reached Plymouth. These newcomers brought no 
food with them, for they had heard such wonderful stories 
of the plenty that was to be found in America that they 
thought it unnecessary to provide for themselves. The 
consequence was that before the winter was over the colo- 
nists had only half an allowance of corn daily, then five 
kernals apiece, and at last none at all. They were able to 
live for a time by killing and eating wild fowls ; but when 
they could get no more of them they had nothing but the 
shell-fish that they could find on the beach. Death from 
starvation seemed their only possible fate, when a ship 
bringing food from England appeared in the harbor. 
When they saw it the poor, half-famished Pilgrims rushed 
to their church to give thanks to God. That was probably 
the first real Thanksgiving Day in America. Frequently 
thereafter one day in the year was set aside for giving 
thanks to God for his goodness to the American people, 
until Thanksgiving Day soon became an annual custom. 
In 1864 President Lincoln appointed the last Thursday 
in November as the day for the nation's thanks ; and since 
then yearly proclamations have been issued by the Presi- 
dents observing the day that Lincoln set aside — the last 
Thursday in November. 

The settlers at Plymouth had many hardships to face, 
but their brave hearts helped them through their diffi- 
culties. Before many years the land they had tilled began 
to yield good harvests. The furs that they traded from 
the Indians sold for large prices in England, and the 
colonists had time to enjoy the freedom of thought and 
religion that they had worked for so faithfully. 

Other people who were not free to think their own 



56 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

thoughts in England found rest and peace with the colony, 
for the Pilgrims were glad to give to others that liberty 
which they claimed for themselves. 

Undoubtedly these thoughtful Pilgrims were the true 
beginners of the great American Republic. Mrs. Hemans 
said of them that 

"They left unstained what they had found — 
Freedom to worship God," 

and that is the finest praise that can be given them. 

In the Palace of the British Parliament and in the Cap- 
itol at Washington may be seen beautiful pictures depict- 
ing the landing of the Mayflower. Far more splendid 
ships have set sail ; but no ship ever carried a more precious 
cargo, for it bore to the New World the seed of liberty and 
so its landing became one of the most important scenes 
in history. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND 

EVERY summer ships came bringing settlers to the 
Pilgrims' colony, until the country around Plym- 
outh could not hold them all, so from time to time 
little groups of people would go forth, led by their min- 
isters, to find a home in the wilderness. They Avould jour- 
ney on until they found some spot that pleased them and 
there they would build a town of logs cut from the trees 
of the forests. This was the way that many New England 
cities were founded. 

In England there had been growing up a new sect of 
people called Puritans. They, unlike the Pilgrims, did 
not wish to separate themselves from the National Church ; 
but they wanted to "purify" that church by leaving out of 
the service all the forms and ceremonies for which they 
could find no instructions in the Bible. 

Many of these people had found their waj'' to Plymouth, 
where they were received kindly. But the Puritans were 
not so broad-minded as the Pilgrims, and they were un- 
willing to live in the colony that was under the government 
of the Separatists. They tried in every way to get affairs 
into their own hands. They took out one of their own 
ministers from England, meaning to establish him over the 
colony, and they so managed matters that John Robinson 
and the rest of the Separatist congregation in Leyden 
were prevented from joining their friends at Plymouth. 
But the Pilgrims held resolutely to their liberty, they were 
not to be put down; so the Puritans were finally obliged to 
find a place for a colony of their own. 

67 



58 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

They decided upon the land around Massachusetts Bay. 
Friends from home joined them, brought over by John 
Endicott in 1628, and the town of Naumkeag, or Salem as 
it was later called, was settled. 

A year after the place of the settlement had been chosen, 
a charter was given by the King of England to the "Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company," which gave them a right to the 
country and made it a part of the English possessions and 
thus protected it from the French and Dutch, who were 
already trading in the neighborhood. 

The granting of this charter seemed to the Puritans in 
England "like a summons from Heaven inviting them to 
America"; for life at home during this time was particu- 
larly uncomfortable. King James had died in 1625 and 
Charles I now ruled. He was more sure than even his 
father had been, that a king was appointed by God to think 
for his people, and his Queen ( Henrietta Maria, who had 
been a French princess) persuaded him to rule "like a 
French king" and to punish all his subjects who would not 
accept the usages of the English Church. 

Helped by his Archbishop, the King fined and impris- 
oned the Puritans, slit their noses, cut off their ears, and 
tortured them in other dreadful ways. So it was little 
wonder that many of them were glad to escape to New 
England. 

In 1630 John Winthrop arrived in Massachusetts Bay, 
on board the Arabella. He brought with him three hun- 
dred families, and for their use, horses, cows, and goats. 

Winthrop was a man of much learning and blessed with 
a large fortune. He was chosen governor of the colony; 
and as Salem did not please him, he built his home where 
Boston stands to-day. Soon other towns were growing up 
under Puritan government, and all these to^^Tis were 
spoken of together as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 

No one in the Puritan communities was allowed to hold 



THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND 59 

office, or even to vote, unless he was a church member. In 
this way it was hoped that only Christian men would be 
entrusted with power. 

At first the climate and the want of proper food caused 
much sickness; before December two hundred of the 
colonists were dead, and such food as the survivors had was 
nearly finished before the end of the winter. But on the 
5th of February, 1631, the ship Lyon came from Bristol 
laden with provisions, so the settlers were cheered and 
fed. 

On the Lyon came a man named Roger Williams, to 
find a home among the Puritans. He was a learned 
scholar and at first was made welcome in the colony. For 
a time, he was minister at Salem; but Williams was not a 
Puritan at heart, and his ideas soon proved too tolerant for 
his position and got him into trouble. 

He preached that the King had no right to take land 
from the Indians without paying for it, and he held that 
every man had a perfect right to believe what his conscience 
told him was right in matters of religion. He even said 
that the Separatists were as important in the sight of God 
as the Puritans I For his free-thinking Roger Williams 
was banished from the colony. 

For some weeks the despised preacher wandered in the 
forests, where the Indians were very kind to him, and at 
last a friendly native took him to Rhode Island. There 
he started a settlement that he named Providence, because 
he said that he had been sent there by God to make a home 
for persons who were persecuted for their conscience' sake. 
Roger Williams was always a good friend to the Indians, 
as he was to every one in need. 

Another person to suffer from the prejudice of the nar- 
row-minded Puritans was a woman, Mrs. Anne Hutchin- 
son. She believed that religion was a matter of conscience 
and not an affair of either church or state; and she held 



60 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

meetings to discuss the question, although the ministers had 
forbidden her to do so. She and her followers were there- 
fore banished from the colony and they made their way to 
Rhode Island. But j\Irs. Hutchinson was not safe even 
in Providence ; for the Massachusetts people began to whis- 
per that she was a witch and it was thought that they might 
send to kill her.' The poor woman moved on, into country 
belonging to the Dutch (beyond Xew Haven) ; but death 
met her there, for her house was burned by marauding 
Indians and she and her family killed. 

Twenty-three years after the landing of the Pilgrims 
there were twenty- four thousand people in Xew England. 
Forty-nine little towns, with their wooden churches and 
forts, had sprung up over the country and the English 
settlers w^ere already beginning to think themselves Amer- 
icans. In 1635 a small party of Puritans had gone into 
the valley of the Connecticut to live and there laid the 
foundation of a State. 

In 1643 a ship, which had been built in JSIassachusetts, 
set sail for London. That was a proud day for the colo- 
nists, for it marked the commencement of American com- 
merce. Xo wonder that the little ship was followed by 
"many prayers of the churches"! 

There was httle or no money in the colonies, for all the 
coin that had been brought from England had gone to buy 
foreign goods ; so the people of Xew England used Indian 
corn in place of money, just as the Virginians used to- 
bacco, and as it was difficult to measure a small enough 
amount of corn, bullets were used in the place of pennies ! 

Soon after the Puritans were established in Massachu- 
setts, they remembered the people of Plymouth and their 
kindness to the first Puritans who had emigrated to Amer- 
ica. To show their gratitude toward their neighbors, the 
Governor of ^lassachusetts and Mr. Wilson, the pastor 
of Boston, went to Plymouth to visit the Pilgrims. They 



THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND 61 

went on foot, for it was only a day's journey from Boston 
to Plymouth ; and it is pleasant to think of this pilgrimage 
undertaken in a spirit of brotherly love that had not always 
appeared in the dealings of the Puritans with the Pil- 
grims. The Governor and the Elder of Plymouth colony 
went out to meet their visitors and led them into the town, 
where they were received with much courtesy. "On the 
Lord's Day they did partake of the sacrament" together, 
and a service was held in which the Puritans took part. 
In this way a friendship was established between the two 
colonies. 

There were now four separate colonies in New Eng- 
land: Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New 
Haven, each with its own government and laws. But 
trouble with the Indians was coming upon the people, and 
the French and Dutch settlers were drawing near to their 
land, so in 1643 the four colonies joined together under 
the name of "The United Colonies of New England," that 
they might better withstand the pressure of their enemies. 

The earliest care of the Puritans had been for the 
education of their children. Soon after landing they had 
built schools and within fifteen years John Harvard had 
started the college that has grown into a great university. 

The Puritans were a stern and sober people. They 
thought it their duty to dress plainly and laugh as seldom 
as possible. Their boys and girls had few of the pleasures 
that children have to-day; they had almost no toys; but 
they must have had great fun playing in the woods, al- 
though they had always to be on the lookout for Indians. 
There were wild flowers to be found in the spring, and nuts 
to gather in the autumn. There were little bear cubs and 
other wild animals to tame and bring up as pets; and in 
the winter there were snow-covered hills to slide down and 
many a snow battle to be fought. So, after all, perhaps 
we need not feel very sorry for the little New Englanders I 



62 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Of course they had to go to school and their httle log 
schoolhouses were neither pretty nor very comfortable; 
there were no pictures on the walls and in midwinter 
weather the schools were often cold and the children had no 
drill to keep them warm and no singing to break the monot- 
ony of lessons. The really solemn business of the week, 
however, was church. On Sundays everybody was made 
to go to church, and there was a man there whose business 
it was to keep the children in order and to rap them over 
the knuckles with a long stick if they did not pay strict 
attention to the sermon. 



CHAPTER XII 

PERSECUTIONS AND WITCHES IN NEW ENGLAND 

ONE would suppose that people who knew how 
dreadful it was to be persecuted for their beliefs 
and who had crossed the sea to find freedom for 
their opinions, would have been ready to give others lib- 
erty to think for themselves. But you have already seen, 
from their treatment of Roger Williams and Anne Hutch- 
inson, that the Puritans were not willing to admit that 
any road could lead to Heaven except the one they trav- 
eled. 

Their narrowness can partly be excused, for they had 
worked so hard and suffered so much to make their colony 
a model of Puritan faith that they feared to let men of 
different beliefs live among them, lest the harmony of their 
hard-earned peace should be swept away. 

Seven or eight men had taken up their homes in Massa- 
chusetts who thought it was not right to baptize young 
children. These men tried to hold a meeting of their own, 
but while they were at worship officers of the law broke in 
upon them and carried them off to church. There they be- 
haved very badly, for they had been brought there against 
their will. They refused to take off their hats while the 
minister was praying and they did all they could to show 
that they thought it was sinful to join in service with peo- 
ple who believed in infant baptism. For their "separation 
of themselves from God's people" they were fined, and 
those who refused to pay the fine were ordered to be "well 
whipped." After this a law was passed, stating that any 

63 



64 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

man who said that he did not believe in the baptizing of 
children, should be made to leave the country. 

Over such small matters of differing opinion, the serious 
Fathers of New England held grave counsel and com- 
mitted great cruelties; but we must try to remember that 
they honestly thought they were doing God's will. 

In England a new sect had arisen, called "Friends," or 
better known as "Quakers." It is supposed that this last 
name had been given the Friends in a spirit of mockery 
because their leader, George Fox, told a judge to "quake at 
the name of the Lord" — probably meaning that man in his 
smallness must fear the greatness of God. These Quakers 
had experienced war and knew all its horrors, and they had 
seen with disgust the useless extravagance practised by the 
men about them ; so they decided to break away from all 
the things that they despised. War they pronounced un- 
lawful, because all people were meant to live together as 
friends. God's will, they said, could be done only by men 
who dressed plainly, were careful of their language, and 
who listened always for the voice of the spirit. 

You see the Quakers did not believe in churches, as they 
were at that time, but they thought that every man could 
hear (if he listened closely) the voice of God's Spirit speak- 
ing within his own heart. This Voice was to be their guide 
and they would do nothing without waiting for its prompt- 
ings to tell them what was right. 

When the Massachusetts people heard of the Quakers 
and that some of them were on their way to New England, 
they were very much alarmed. They did not want to 
have an}i;hing to do with the new sect, and when a ship 
came into Boston harbor with some Quaker women on 
board, the unwelcome guests were at once put into prison 
while their boxes were being searched and their books 
burned by the hangman, and then they were sent back to 
England on the ship that had brought them. 



PERSECUTIONS AND WITCHES 65 

The Puritans forbade all ship-masters to bring Quakers 
to their colony; but they reckoned without the Quakers. 
More and more of them in England thought that the spirit 
commanded them to go to Boston with messages for the 
Puritans. The unhappy colonists tried to get rid of them 
by banishment ; but as surely as they were sent out of the 
country, they would come back again, so laws were passed 
sentencing to death all who should return. Four persons 
were hanged and many were whipped and had their ears 
cut off; but the Puritans got to be ashamed of their own 
law, so when a letter was brought from the King (by a 
Quaker named Wenlock Christian, who had been banished 
from the colony on pain of death) saying that the people 
of the colonies should "forbear to proceed further against 
the Quakers," they were glad to have a reason for stop- 
ping their cruel work. 

Years afterward the New Englanders acknowledged 
that they had done wrong in persecuting men for their 
beliefs and they made what amends they could by giving 
lands or money to the descendants of the Quakers who had 
suffered at their hands. 

After this, force was never used again in America to 
control men's thoughts on the subject of religion. 

There was another dark time of persecution in New 
England ; but difference of religious opinions had nothing 
to do with this trouble, which was an outbreak of super- 
stitious fear of witches. 

In England from three to five hundred poor wretches 
were put to death every year because they were said to be 
"familiars of the Evil One," and emigrants had taken with 
them to the New World a strong belief in demons in human 
form who could fly about on broom-sticks, or who had 
the power of turning people into animals and of bringing 
illness and discomfort upon unfortunate persons. The 
strangeness of the new land did not help to lessen the dread 



60 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that even intelligent people had of witchcraft, for now 
they lived 

"On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, 
Full of terror and mystery, 
Half redeemed from the evil hold 
Of the wood so dreary and dark and old, 

Think of the sea's dread monotone. 

Of the mournful wail from the pinewood blown, 

Of the strange vast splendors that lit the North, 

Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth. 

And the dismal tales the Indians told, 

Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold 

And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boast 

And the lowering shadows seemed full of ghosts 

And above and below on every side, 

The fear of his creed seemed verified." 

It is only wonderful that the persecution of witches had 
not begun earlier in New England. Over the sea King 
James had written a book in which he declared that not to 
put witches to death was "a treason against God," since 
they were supposed to be people who had learned their 
black arts from Satan. This same learned monarch was 
said to be such an authority on witches that he could tell 
by tasting the water of a cauldron in which an accused 
person had been boiled whether or not it was truly a witch 
who had been put to death ! 

Unaccountable things happened in the colonies : milk 
would sour without any seeming cause, or there would be 
strange shriekings heard at night. The busy New Eng- 
landers put these things down to natural causes, such as 
thunder in the air, or panthers in the forest, and thus 
showed their good sense. But when the daughter and 
niece of Mr. Paris, a minister in Salem, became ill and the 
doctors, not knowing what ailed them, solemnly said they 



PERSECUTIONS AND WITCHES 67 

were bewitched, the minds of the people were at once in- 
fected with the fear of sorcery and the friends of the suf- 
ferers began looking about to find the witch who was re- 
sponsible for the mischief. Three old women were fixed 
upon as likely persons and were thrown into prison. 

This was the beginning of a sort of madness that took 
hold of the colonists. People went about accusing one an- 
other of being witches. The prisons were full of the sus- 
pected persons. Men, women, and children were hanged, 
and even animals were put to death for "taking part in 
some dark work." Anything the least unusual was put 
down to "Black Magic" and the frightened imagination 
of the people wove fact and fancy together into proofs of 
witchcraft. For instance: A man named John Allen re- 
fused to carry a cart-load of wood for a woman named 
Susanna Martin, because he thought the load too heavy for 
his oxen, Susanna was displeased at his refusal and said: 
"It had been good that you had done this thing for me, for 
your oxen shall never do you any more service." 

This remark sounded like a threat and made Allen very 
angry, 

"Do you threaten me, you old witch?" he cried. "I'll 
throw you into the brook !" But before he could get to her 
the woman ran over the bridge and got away. 

Allen turned around and started for his home. Before 
he had gone far one of his oxen became so weak that it had 
to be unyoked ; and when he got it home, it was still so unfit 
for work that he put it into a pasture with several of his 
neighbors' oxen to graze. In a few days the oxen were 
missing and their tracks showed that they had all run into 
the mouth of the Merrimac River and not returned. They 
were found on an island the next day; but when their 
owners tried to drive them back home, they ran like mad 
things until they came to the sea, where, plunging in, they 
swam away out of sight and only one of them ever re- 



68 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

turned alive. Susanna Martin was held responsible for 
the destruction of the oxen; she was accused of witchcraft 
and condemned to death, although at her trial "her plea 
was that she had led a most virtuous and holy life." 

A minister who tried to stop such cruel work was put 
to death; witches were spoken of in the Bible, said the 
crazed New Englanders, and if a minister denied them he 
must be a witch himself. 

Some of the condemned people said they were guilty and 
so saved their lives ; but many scorned to purchase life with 
falsehood and were hanged. 

For more than a year this persecution went on; and then 
it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. ]Men sickened of 
the dreadful work and the Governor of Massachusetts had 
all the suspected persons who were in prison set at liberty, 
and all the condemned pardoned. Then a Fast Daj'- was 
held to "ask God's pardon on the errors of His people," 
for they were truly overpowered with shame at their cruel 
foolishness. 

So ended forever the hunting of witches in New Eng- 
land; although in Great Britain the persecution was still 
going on. The last so-called witch was not burned in 
Scotland until 1722. 

The people of New England were not wiser than the 
days they lived in; their 

"... sudden burst of wickedness and crime 
Was but the common madness of the time. 
When in all lands that lie beneath the sound 
Of Sabbath bells, a witch was burned or drowned." 

But when they saw they had made a mistake they were 
ready to acknowledge it and were eager to make what 
amends lay in their power. 



CHAPTER XIII 

KING Philip's war 

AFTER the death of Massasoit, King or Chief of 
the Wampanoag Indians, his son Alexander 
kept the treaty that his father had made with 
the Puritans; but when the younger son, Phihp, became 
Chief the end of the long peace was at hand. 

Phihp saw that his people were in danger of being 
stamped out by the strangers from over the seas; he saw 
the hunting-grounds of the Indians growing smaller and 
smaller and the faith of their fathers being forgotten for 
the white man's God. These things made Philip very 
unhappy and he talked them over with chiefs of other 
tribes. 

A warning was brought to the colonists that a conspiracy 
was formed among the chiefs to kill every white man in 
New England. Whether there had been such a conspiracy 
or not has never been proved. Philip had the Indian who 
had given the warning put to death and he said that the 
story of the plot was untrue. The Puritans tried the 
Wampanoags for the murder of the Indian who had 
brought them news of a conspiracy, and two young braves 
were found guilty of the murder and hanged. Then the 
proud Chief, angered at being treated in a way that he 
felt was insulting to his dignity, did conspire for war in 
earnest. 

The first attack of the Indians was made against Swan- 
sea in June, 1675, when several of the villagers were killed. 
After that there followed nearly two years of war of the 

69 



70 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

most terrible kind ; for the Red Men carried on their ven- 
geance so secretly that the colonists never knew a mo- 
ment's safety. 

The Indians did not care to fight in the open, for they 
feared the English guns. They preferred to lurk behind 
trees and fences until they saw a solitary man working in 
a field, or two or three childi'en playing in the woods ; then 
they would deal out a swift and terrible death to the unsus- 
pecting victims. They would surround a lonely house in 
the night and murder the family in their beds. Some- 
times a whole village would be awakened by the war-whoop 
of the Indians to find that while they slept their homes had 
been set on fire and it was too late to escape. Babies were 
murdered in the cradles, and the brave mothers of New 
England went about their duties with a loaded musket 
always at hand to be used to protect their little ones ; but 
very often the husbands and fathers, coming home from 
work would find wife and children cruelly murdered. 

In a lonely home near Salem, a woman was busy one 
morning making bread. She turned to get some flour 
from the barrel just in time to see an Indian, daubed all 
over with war-paint and with his tomahawk raised in his 
hand, steahng up to the bed where her baby girl lay sleep- 
ing. Without a moment's hesitation the mother lifted a 
kettle of boiling soup from the fire and flung it over the 
savage, so saving her own and her child's life. The Indian 
was frightfully scalded and the good woman set to work 
to bind up his burns with soothing oil. She nursed him 
back to health and after that he remained in her household 
a grateful and devoted servant! 

A strange thing happened when the town of Hadley 
was attacked. It was on a Sunday morning and the 
people were thinking more of church than of Indians; so 
when the war-whoop of the enemy sounded, terror and 
confusion broke out. But an unknown person suddenly 



KING PHILIP'S WAR 71 

appeared among the English and restored order, leading a 
charge against the Indians so successfully that they were 
driven back into the forest. When quiet again settled 
down on the village, the kindly leader had disappeared. 
The people thought that an angel had been sent from 
Heaven to help them in their need, and it was not until a 
long time afterward that they discovered that their mys- 
terious visitor was a fugitive from English justice, named 
William Goffe, who was in hiding in America. 

The colonists, roused by the horrors of savage warfare, 
raised an army of about three hundred men and, led by 
Winslow, they marched against the Narragansett Indians 
who were encamped in a great swamp. After much fight- 
ing the Englishmen got near enough to set fire to the wig- 
wams, with the result that about a thousand Indians per- 
ished. 

King Philip was not discouraged by this victory of his 
enemies; he busied himself in getting the more northern 
tribes of Indians to join him and in leading them against 
the settlements; so that the war became more fierce than 
ever. But now the colonists were awake to the danger and 
almost every attack of the Indians was repulsed, and the 
Red Men were hunted from place to place until they were 
disheartened by their defeats. Finally the English suc- 
ceeded in surrounding Philip near Mount Hope, where he 
and a large party of his people were in hiding. The 
Chief's wife and son wtre taken prisoners and a hundred 
and thirty of his men were killed; but Philip himself 
escaped to a swamp, where he lay concealed for two weeks, 
only to be found in the end and shot by an Indian ally of 
the Enghsh. 

With the death of their leader the Indians lost heart in 
the war. They were, most of them, in desperate need of 
food, for their stores of grain had been burned ; so one at 
a time the different tribes came in and surrendered to the 



72 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

colonists. The northern tribes were still unfriendly, but 
most of them returned to their own country and contented 
themselves with threats and murmurings. 

King Philip's War has been called "The Darkest Page 
in Colonial History." It was a di*eadful time for whites 
and Indians alike, but it was the last time that the Indians, 
unaided, tried to hold the land against the white intruders. 

Soon after their coming to New England the white men 
had sent out missionaries to work among the Indians. 
Perhaps the man who did the most good was John Eliot, 
who was called "The Apostle to the Indians" because he 
spent so many years in teaching them about Christ. He 
learned their language so that he might talk with them and 
he printed books in the Indian tongue and taught the Red 
Men how to read them. Eliot was a very wonderful man 
and he was always beloved by the Indians, because he 
loved and understood them. 

A few Indian churches were built, but not many, for 
most of the natives held to their old forest superstitions, 
their legends of devils and magic, and, like King Philip, 
they disliked the new order of things. It is interesting to 
remember, however, that the natives who had been con- 
verted stood by their new friends through all the misunder- 
standings that arose between Indians and white men. 



CHAPTER XIV 

NEW AMSTERDAM AND HOW IT BECAME NEW YORK 

THE Dutch were a wide-awake people and they 
saw that it would be worth while to share in the 
fortunes of the New World. 

About two years after the settlement of Jamestown in 
Virginia by the English, the Dutch East India Company 
engaged an English sailor, named Hemy Hudson, to go 
to America. They wanted him to try to find that shorter 
way to India that Columbus had failed to discover. 

With a mixed crew of Dutch and English, Hudson set 
sail in his ship, the Half Moon; and on reaching America 
he sailed along the coast, looking for a waterway that 
might lead to India. He came to a broad bay — now New 
York Bay — and, passing through it, found himself on one 
of the most beautiful rivers in the world. 

Up this river, to which Hudson gave his own name, the 
Half Moon sailed until it seemed unsafe for the big vessel 
to venture farther; then Hudson sent a small boat on as 
far as Albany — at that time a dense but lovely wilderness. 
Indians crowded about the Dutch ship in their canoes and 
when the sailors saw that they were friendly they traded 
with them, getting grapes, fat yellow pumpkins and furs 
in exchange for beads and blankets. Delighted with all 
he had seen, Henry Hudson started back to Holland to tell 
his patrons of the wonderful region he had found ; but the 
Half Moon was detained in England and Hudson's ser- 
vices were claimed by the English King; so he could not 
get to Holland himself to make his report, although he sent 

73 



74 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

word to the Dutch that of all lands on which he had ever 
set foot, this that he had discovered was the best. 

Once again Hudson returned to America, this time for 
the English. He went much farther north, to the bay that 
is called by his name; but there the hardships and the great 
cold made his sailors mutinous. Maddened by the dangers 
of the voyage, they took Hudson, his son, and seven others, 
and set them adrift in a small boat. They were never 
heard of again and it is supposed that they were dashed 
to pieces by the floating ice. 

There is a fine old legend of how they found their way 
back to the shining Hudson River and of how they still live 
in the Catskill Mountains upon which the explorer had 
looked with such admiration. When it thunders there, 
they will tell you that the deep rolling sound that seems 
to shake the hills is the noise that Henrj'^ Hudson and his 
crew make by rolling ninepins about. There is the story, 
too, of Rip Van Winkle, who watched this mountain game 
and who slept for twenty years because he drank with Hud- 
son and his men! 

The Indians believed that the weather was made in the 
Catskills. They thought that spirits lived there who 
spread sunshine or clouds over the country and who were 
ruled by their mother, a very old squaw spirit, who lived 
on the highest peak of the mountains and had charge of 
the doors of night and day. However this may be, there 
is no part of the United States that seems a more fitting 
haunt for fairies and story people than the beautiful 
country through which the sparkling waters of the Hudson 
sweep do^vn to the sea. 

About five years after the discovery of the Hudson River 
the Dutch sent to establish trading stations along its banks 
and several families came from Holland to live on Man- 
hattan Island, where the city of New York now stands. 
(The name Manhattan, or rather the old version of it, 



NEW AMSTERDAM 75 

Mannahatta, means **the place encircled by many swift 
tides and sparkling waters.") After a few years the 
Dutch settlers bought the island for about twenty-five 
dollars. 

A wooden fort was built and round it clustered the 
houses of the white men. Trade with the Indians paid 
well and the little village prospered until, in 1643, a war 
with the natives brought two years of distress. 

A young Indian, maddened by drink, killed one of the 
settlers. Kieft, who was governor of the colony, de- 
manded the life of the murderer ; but the Indians held that 
the white men were to blame for the murder. "For," said 
a chief, "you yourselves are the cause of this evil; you ought 
not to craze young Indians with brandy. Your own peo- 
ple when drunk fight with knives and do foolish things; 
you cannot prevent mischief till you cease to sell strong 
drink to the Indian." There was deep truth in this, but 
Kieft would not heed it ; and because his demand was dis- 
regarded, he fell upon the Algonkin Indians and mas- 
sacred them. It was a dreadful mistake. As soon as the 
other tribes in the neighborhood heard of the outrage they 
all gathered to make war upon the strangers. 

Dutch villages which had grown up around the trading 
stations were burned. Farms on Long Island were laid 
waste and the settlers who escaped death were forced to 
retreat to the southern comer of Manhattan. A palisade 
was built across the island, where Wall Street is now, and 
behind that the people managed to defend themselves from 
attack. 

Governor Kieft, who was responsible for all the trouble, 
was put out of office and Peter Stuyvesant was made gov- 
ernor of the colony of New Netherland in his stead. Stuy- 
vesant was a soldier who had lost a leg in the wars. He 
had a hot temper, but he was a brave and well meaning man. 
He did his best to make peace with the Indians and in his 



76 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dealings with them he was always just; but the people 
murmured against him because he allowed none of them a 
voice in the government ; he was a law unto himself. 

Hearing that freedom and religious thought was to be 
found in New Netherland, many Europeans flocked to the 
Dutch colony, where, for the most part, they lived in peace; 
although Stuyvesant did take it upon himself to persecute 
what he called "the abominable sect of Quakers." 

For twenty years all went well with the Dutch. Stuy- 
vesant enlarged the boundary of the colony by annexing 
what is now New Jersey — land that had been claimed by 
Sweden, but that the few poor Swedish settlers were unable 
to hold. 

New Amsterdam, the town on Manhattan Island, was 
a port of importance from the very first. In was a quaint, 
pretty place, for the houses were built after the style of the 
homes that the Dutch had left behind them in Holland. 
They had high gable roofs and were trimmed with black 
and 3^ellow bricks. 

Until 1664 Stuyvesant ruled the colony alone, in spite 
of the grumbling of some of the people ; then one day Eng- 
lish ships of war sailed into the bay and anchored there. 

The "Merry Monarch" of England, Charles II, had seen 
fit to make his brother, James, Duke of York, a present. 
He gave him a great tract of country in the New World, 
including the Dutch settlements. It was not his to give, 
but that mattered nothing to Charles ; it was an age when 
"might made right," so he calmly sent over to claim New 
Netherland. 

It was a bad time for Peter Stuyvesant ; he got into a 
fearful rage, stumped about on his wooden leg and threat- 
ened to blow up the English ships if they did not hoist 
their sails and get away. He had the twenty guns of the 
fort loaded that he might fire on the ships ; but the people 
of New Amsterdam would not help him to stand out 



NEW AMSTERDAM 77 

against the English ; they begged him to surrender. They 
knew that they stood little chance of victory in a conflict 
with such an important foe and there were many of them 
who really welcomed the protection and government of the 
English. So New Amsterdam passed quietly into the 
possession of the Duke and its name was changed to New 
York in his honor. 

All the settlements along the Hudson surrendered to 
England, and New Jersey also passed into British rule. 

New York people to-day are proud to remember that 
their great city was originally a Dutch settlement. For 
years the Dutch language was spoken there and America 
traces some of her most delightful customs to the days of 
New Amsterdam. It was the Dutch who gave Santa 
Claus to American children and who taught them how to 
keep Christmas with open hearts and homes. It is they 
to whom Americans owe their fun at New Year's time and 
their colored eggs on Easter Day; for, amid all the hard- 
ships of colonization, the cheerful Dutch fathers and 
mothers kept a spirit of jollity and good will and, for 
their children's sake, they made a place in their new life 
for the old home customs. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SETTLEMENT OF MARYLAND AND THE CAEOLINAS 

GEORGE CALVERT (afterward Lord Balti- 
more) was one of the Secretaries of State under 
James I. He was a man of keen energy and 
some wealth. In 1621 he planted a colony in Newfound- 
land and called it Avalon, after the fabled isle in the 
legends of King Arthur. 

Six years later Lord Baltimore visited his colony, but 
found the climate so unpleasant and injurious to his health 
that he left Newfoundland and went to Virginia. Here 
he was not a welcome visitor, because he was a Roman 
Catholic and the feeling against the Church of Rome was 
very bitter at this time, both in England and in the col- 
onies. The Virginians insisted that if he remained among 
them he must take an oath declaring that the King was 
the head of the Church. Baltimore would not do this, so 
he was forced to return to England. 

Filled with praise for the beauties and promise of Amer- 
ica, he went to the King, now Charles I, and asked for a 
part of Virginia north of the Potomac River, that he 
might start a colony there. The land he wanted was said 
to be occupied only by scattered tribes of Indians ; but it 
was in danger of being taken up by the French, the 
Dutch, or the Swedes. 

Charles, who had married a Roman Catholic wife, was 
not opposed to Baltimore because of his religion, and he 
thought that to give him the colony would be a good way 
to keep it for England, since the people in Virginia were 
too few to use all the land that had been originally por- 

78 



MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS 79 

tioned to them. So a charter was made out, granting to 
Lord Baltimore and his heirs the site that he wanted for 
his colony. It was to be called Maryland out of comph- 
ment to the Catholic Queen, Hem-ietta Maria, and for it 
Baltimore was to pay the King two Indian arrows every 
year and a fifth of all gold or silver ore that should be 
found there. 

Before the new owner could send out to establish a 
colony, he died and the territory went to his son, Cecil 
Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, who was given all 
the power of a ruler. 

The first settlers started for Maryland in 1633. The 
party was led by Lord Baltimore's brother, Leonard Cal- 
vert. It was made up of twenty other gentlemen and two 
or three hundred laboring men, who, we are told, were 
"well provided in all things." With them went Father 
White and two other Jesuit missionaries. 

This company set sail in a ship called the Arh and a 
pinnace named the Dove, after having committed them- 
selves to the protection of God, the Virgin Mary, and the 
guardian angels of Maryland. 

The ships took a round-about way and it was more than 
a year after they left England that they arrived at Point 
Comfort, Virginia. It was difficult for the Virginians to 
give a courteous welcome to these strangers who had 
come to take part of the land that they had been accus- 
tomed to count as their own ; but letters of instruction had 
reached them from the King and they did not fail in their 
greetings to the newcomers. 

In March, 1634, the Ark entered the Potomac River. 
The Indians, who saw so big a ship for the first time, were 
greatly impressed by its size and wondered where a tree 
had been found large enough to make such a huge canoe. 

Calvert sailed up the river to Piscataquo, an Indian vil- 
lage nearly opposite the present site of Mount Vernon. 



80 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Here he was received kindly by the Chief; but it did not 
seem wise to plant a settlement so far inland ; so the Ark 
was taken back down the river and up one of its branches, 
now known as St. INIary's, and anchored in front of the 
Indian town of Yoacomico. 

On the day of the Annunciation, the 25th of March, 
one of the priests offered "the sacrifice of the mass," which 
had never been celebrated in that part of the world before. 
When it was ended a gr.eat cross was carried in procession 
and set up in an appointed place, while the htany of the 
Holy Cross was chanted. Thus was Maryland estab- 
lished, for on the next day the emigrants took quiet pos- 
session of the land. 

Friendly terms had been arrived at between the Eng- 
lishmen and the Indians. The white men were to share 
the town with the natives through the first winter and then 
bu)'' it from them. The Indian women taught the wives of 
the white settlers how to make corn bread, and the war- 
riors instructed the hunters in the business of the chase. 

No suffering was endui'cd and no fear of want arose; 
for the coming into possession of land already cultivated 
made things easy for the colonists. The gardens and 
corn-fields flourished and the white men lived in harmony 
with their red neighbors. 

By the charter that the King had given to Lord Balti- 
more religious liberty was secured for Maryland. Roman 
Catholics who suffered under the laws of England found 
peace there and Protestants were sheltered and protected 
from persecution. The missionary work of Father White 
and his fellows prospered. The first chapel in Maryland 
was built by the Indians, to whom the service of the Cath- 
olic Church made a strong appeal. 

Of course the colony had its troubles. There were sev- 
eral little civil wars in the first years ; but in spite of them 
Maryland throve and grew rich, like Virginia, by the grow- 



MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS 81 

ing of the Indian tobacco. Lord Baltimore's colony came 
to stand for fair dealing and good government and the 
peacefulness of its development speaks well for the guar- 
dian angels of Maryland. 

In 1663 Charles II gave to some of his courtiers a great 
stretch of land south of Virginia. This territory was 
called Carolina, from Carolus, the Latin form of the 
King's own name. It included what we now call North 
and South Carolina. 

Up to this time little thought had been given to the 
southern part of America by the English. You may re- 
member that Spanish explorers had claimed this portion 
of the country for Spain; but Charles was not the person 
to remember that any one else had a claim to land that 
he wanted ! 

The eight gentlemen to whom the gift of Carolina was 
made were called "The Lords Proprietors." They 
planned what they thought would be a delightful system 
of government, and one that would keep all the wealth 
of the colony in their own hands. They proposed to rule 
Carolina by noblemen who were to own the land and rent 
it out to tenants. But the men who dreamed of this plan 
had never been in America; they had to learn that their 
degi'ees of nobility and their titles were of little use in 
the wilderness and that people were not going to pay rent 
to them in a country where they could get all the land they 
wanted for nothing; so the growth of the Carohna col- 
onies was slow and beset with difficulties. 

The foundation of the city of Charleston was laid in 
1680 and about that time a large number of French 
Protestants settled in South Carohna. The first real good 
fortune came to the Carolinas in 1696, in the form of a bag 
of seed-rice. This was presented to the Governor by the 
captain of a Madagascar vessel. The rice was distributed 
among the planters and sown. It grew so wonderfully 



82 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 

that in a few years it had become one of the most impor- 
tant products of the country. 

The CaroHna settlers had constant trouble from the 
Spanish in Florida, and there were dreadful wars with the 
Indians. The most serious trouble of all, however, was 
the constant civil strife. The proprietors who appointed 
the governors acted in such a selfish way that in 1719 the 
South Carolina people rose in rebellion and marched into 
Charleston, declaring that they refused longer to be ruled 
by the Lords Proprietors. In 1729 the King bought out 
the interest of the proprietors and after that both North 
and South Carolina were governed as royal colonies. 



CHAPTER XVI 

WILLIAM PENN AND THE QUAKERS SETTLE 
PENNSYLVANIA 

WE have seen that when the Duke of York took 
possession of New Netherland his territory in- 
cluded not only what we call New York but 
also New Jersey. He owned the land to the east as far 
as the Connecticut River, and south to the Delaware River. 
New York he kept for himself, but New Jersey he gave 
to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who in 
their turn sold it. 

In 1674 the owners of this territory divided it into colo- 
nies called East and West Jersey, promising all people 
who should come to live there liberty to follow whatever 
religion they chose. It was not until 1702 that the two 
Jerseys were again united under one name. 

There settled in East Jersey many Presbyterians who 
were driven from their native land by the persecutions of 
Charles II. People from New England also moved to 
East Jersey; and several Quaker families took up their 
homes there; but West Jersey became a more important 
center for the Quakers, for it had been bought by men of 
their own faith. One of those to help in the manage- 
ment of this colony was a young man of gentle birth, 
named William Penn. His father was an English ad- 
miral who had won fame in the wars with the Dutch. 

The boy was born in London in 1644. While he was a 
student at Oxford he became interested in the Society of 
Friends, or Quakers, and was expelled from the university 

83 



84 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

because of his association with them. His father was so 
angry that he forbade him his house, and it was some time 
before he would forgive him for his religious views. 
Young Penn was many times imprisoned for his faith, but 
he remained undaunted. He went to Ireland, Holland, 
and Germany, to preach, and he made many converts in 
these countries. While engaged in the affairs of West 
Jersey he saw the land on the other side of the Delaware 
River was unoccupied, except by a few Swedes, and it 
occurred to him that he might get this land and start a 
colony. 

King Charles owed Admiral Penn a considerable 
amount of money and on the Admiral's death this claim 
descended to his son. The King, who was always in need 
of ready money, was glad to cancel the debt by granting 
to Penn land on the west side of the Delaware River. 
Charles called this land Pennsylvania, which means Penn's 
Forest, in memory of the old Admiral. 

What is now the State of Delaware was also put under 
Penn's government by the Duke of York. This transfer 
was made with much ceremony. When Penn reached 
New Castle, in Delaware, the key of the fort was handed 
to him. With it he locked himself into the fort and then 
let himself out again, to show that he (and he alone) had 
charge of the government. To prove that the land and 
the forest belonged to him, a piece of sod with a twig in 
it was handed to Penn; then a bowl filled with river water 
was given him, to show that he was lord of the rivers as 
well as of the land. So began what William Penn himself 
called "The Holy Experiment." 

Penn was one of the wisest rulers that ever lived and 
his colony was the most Christian triumph of the New 
World. "I desired," he said, "to show men as free and 
happy as they could be." 

The first immigrants to Pennsylvania arrived in 1681 



WILLIAM PENN AND THE QUAKERS 85 

and landed where Philadelphia now stands. There was 
nothing there then but beautiful woods sloping to the 
river, and the people had to dig caves to live in during the 
first winter. In that year many vessels came to the new 
colony, bringing not only English, but Welsh and Irish 
people and many Germans, all attracted by William 
Penn's fatherly government and by the fact that the land 
in Pennsylvania was not taken up in great estates as it 
was in Virginia and in New York. The poor man in 
Penn's colony could get a farm of his own and was not 
beholden to an over-lord or big proprietor. 

Penn wished his people to help to govern themselves, for 
he saw that they must know their own needs even better 
than he. "Whatever sober and free men can reasonably 
desire, for the security and improvement of their own hap- 
piness" he said he was willing to give them, and he was 
true to his word. The people appointed men to represent 
their interests, and a plan of government, approved by 
Penn, was drawn up by them and made law. 

His dealings with the Indians were just and kind. He 
treated them as brothers, and his reward was their love 
and respect. A peace conference was held beneath a large 
elm-tree that grew at Shakumaxon on the north edge of 
Philadelphia, beside the Delaware. There Penn and a 
few Quakers met the Chief of the Lenni Lenapfe tribe and 
some of his men, and it was arranged that all differences 
between the Indians and the people of Pennsylvania should 
be settled by peaceful compromise instead of war ; that an 
equal number of men of each race should be chosen to judge 
the right and the wi'ong of any dispute and to settle it. 
Penn said to the Indians, "We meet on the broad pathway 
of good faith and good will ; no advantage shall be taken 
on either side, but all shall be openness and love." 
Touched by the fair speaking the Red Men answered, 
**We will hve in love with William Penn as long as the sun 



86 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and the moon shall endui*e." With that promise they 
went back to their wigwams, proud in the trust of their 
white friend. 

Penn was often a welcome guest among the Indians. 
He shared their feasts, ate "hominy and roasted acorns" 
with them, and joined in their games. The hand of a Red 
Man was never raised against a Quaker, although New 
England suffered so dreadfully from Indian wars and the 
Dutch in New York were fighting continually with the 
Algonkin tribes. 

Pennsylvania soon became one of the richest colonies in 
America, for peace pays much better than war, and Phila- 
delphia grew into a beautiful town, with broad streets, 
bordered with shady trees; a town worthy of its musical 
name, which means "Brotherly Love," and fit to be "the 
birthplace of American independence." 

In his broad-brimmed hat and sober garb, Wilham Penn 
was as truly a knight-errant as ever wore armor, for he 
spent his life in righting the wrongs of others. Sometimes 
his field was England and sometimes his beloved colony in 
America, but whatever the cause he fought for the only 
weapon that he used was Peace. He did all in his power 
to secure their rights for the Roman Catholics ; for, though 
he was a Quaker himself, he believed that each man must 
follow his own conscience, and he detested persecution. 

After William Penn's death, Pennsylvania remained in 
the hands of his family, who appointed its governors, until 
the American War of the Revolution. 




'THE RED MEN ANSWERED, "WE WILL LIVE IN LOVE WITH WILLIAM PENN AS 
LONG AS THE SUN AND THE MOON SHALL ENDURE*" 



CHAPTER XVII 

GEORGIA IS SETTLED AND BECOMES A REFUGE FOR THE 

POOR 

FIFTY years after the settlement of Pennsylvania, 
Georgia, the last of the thirteen original States of 
the Union, came into being. 

Carolina had been vaguely supposed to reach as far 
south as the Spanish possessions in Florida; but as there 
were almost no people in the southern part of the terri- 
tory, there was talk of wedging in a new and distinct 
colony between Carolina and Florida so that the country 
might be more readily kept from Spain. 

Great changes had taken place in England since 1681. 
The British people had revolted against the old order of 
government. The House of Stuart had been cast out and 
with it had gone the "divine right of kings" to rule with- 
out the cooperation of the people. The real power in the 
country was now the Parliament. 

One of the members of Parliament in 1732 was General 
James Oglethorpe. He was a man of very kind and gen- 
erous nature and it was he who took up the project of the 
new colony. 

Oglethorpe had a friend who was put into prison because 
he was too poor to pay his debts. This seemed neither 
wise nor humane, for a man who was kept behind prison 
walls had no chance of earning the money to pay his cred- 
itors, and the abuses suffered in the Debtor's Prison were 
enough to embitter his life forever. Oglethorpe looked 
into the matter and found about four hundred persons were 

87 



88 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

imprisoned for debt every year. He appealed to Parlia- 
ment about it and through his efforts many hundreds of 
wretched people were set at liberty who might otherwise 
have died in prison. 

This was a great step, but Oglethorpe knew it was not 
enough to give these men their freedom if he could not 
give them work as well. Kemembering the scheme that 
had been talked of for the uninhabited part of South Caro- 
lina, he arranged to get a grant for that land and to plant 
a colony there, where these discouraged men might have a 
chance to start life afresh. 

A charter was drawn up, dated June 8th, 1732, and 
signed by King George II, which named the country be- 
tween the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, Georgia, and 
placed it under the guardianship of a company that was to 
hold it "in trust for the poor." 

Parliament gave ten thousand pounds to help to estab- 
lish the colony and many generous gifts were made by pri- 
vate persons. 

The common seal used by the Georgia corporation had 
on it the motto, in Latin, "Not for themselves but for 
others"; and this expressed the spirit of Oglethorpe and 
the other patrons of the enterprise. Their one idea was 
to make of Georgia a refuge for distressed English people 
and for Protestants, of all nationalities, who suffered per- 
secution. 

In November, 1732, Oglethorpe sailed for Georgia with 
one hundred and twenty emigi-ants, who were all penniless 
but of good character. Arrived in the "Promised Land," 
the site was chosen for the capital of the new colony. 
Oglethorpe pitched his tent where Savannah now stands 
and at once began planning the town. 

The Indians of the neighborhood came to the settlers 
and asked to enter into an alliance of friendship with 
them. The good faith and fair-mindedness of Oglethorpe 



GEORGIA IS SETTLED 89 

gave the Red ^len confidence in him, and he in his turn 
was pleased with their simpHcity. 

Tomochichi, a chieftain of the Yamacraws, brought as 
a present a buffalo skin, painted on the inside with the 
feathers and head of an eagle. "The feathers of the eagle 
are soft and mean love," he said; ''the buffalo skin is warm 
and the emblem of protection. Therefore love and protect 
our little famihes." Long King, the old chief of the 
Ocanas, spoke for his people: "The Great Spirit who dwells 
everywhere around, and gives breath to all men, sends the 
English to instruct us." Many presents were exchanged. 
A treaty of peace was signed and trade between the In- 
dians and the white men was encouraged. 

The colony grew rapidly. Augusta was founded in 
1734, and in that same year more than five hundi-ed immi- 
grants arrived. Of these some were German Protestants 
who fled from persecution in their own country ; one hun- 
dred and fifty were Scotch Highlanders. 

The fame of Oglethorpe's scheme had spread over Eu- 
rope, and by 1740 as many as twenty-five hundred immi- 
grants had reached Georgia. "His undertaking will suc- 
ceed," said the Governor of South Carolina, speaking of 
Oglethorpe; "for he nobly devotes all his powers to serve 
the poor, and rescue them from their wretchedness." 

There was hardly any good thing that was not attempted 
in Georgia. The raising of silk-worms was tried, but with- 
out success ; vineyards were planted ; and valuable tropical 
trees were transplanted to this almost tropical country. 
The inexperience of the people, however, and some lack in 
the climate did not prosper these ventures. Indigo and 
rice were the things that grew best in the colony, but it 
took some time for the people to discover this. 

To make the colonists temperate, the sale of liquor was 
prohibited and slave owning was forbidden in Georgia. 
These restrictions did not please the people; they grew 



90 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

restless because they could not share in what they thought 
were the privileges of other colonies, and they complained 
that they had too little voice in the government. Religious 
differences were added to civil ones. The famous clergy- 
men, John and Charles Wesley, who were for a short time 
residents in Georgia, were driven from the colony. 

But a common danger threatened Georgia and turned 
the thoughts of the people into other channels. The Span- 
ish in Florida had not been sleeping; they had stirred up 
some of the distant tribes of Indians against the Georgia 
settlers and they were continually annoying the colonists 
in petty waj^s; so that Oglethorpe decided to attack St. 
Augustine. Virginia and the Carolinas sent a regiment 
to his assistance and his Indian friends joined his forces; 
but the attack was unsuccessful. The Spanish fort proved 
too strong to be captured, and the English were obliged 
to retreat. 

After this the aggressions of the Spaniards became more 
and more violent, so that Samuel Johnson, the English 
writer who was a friend of Oglethorpe's, wrote indig- 
nantly: 

"Has Heaven reserved in pity to the poor, 
No pathless waste or undiscovered shore? 
No secret island in the boundless main? 
No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain? " 

In 1742 the Governor of St. Augustine grew so bold 
that he advanced with thirty-two vessels and three thou- 
sand men to attack the forts on the Altamaha. Ogle- 
thorpe's forces were very small and his colony was in great 
danger of being captured; but by a skilful use of such ad- 
vantages as he had the Englishman kept the Spaniards at 
bay and at last frightened them away by circulating reports 
of the strong reinforcements that he was expecting. 

As soon as Georgia was safe from Spain the Colonists 



GEORGIA IS SETTLED 91 

remembered their grievances and began to complain again 
that they did not enjoy their rightful privileges. The dis- 
couraged trustees withdrew from ungrateful Georgia in 
1752, and the colony became the property of the Crown. 
As inhabitants of a royal colony the privileges that the 
people had coveted fell to their share. Negroes and rum 
were imported and the seed of a great future evil was 
planted in Georgia, an evil that Oglethorpe had foreseen 
and tried to spare the colony. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES 

1]Sr August, 1619, just sixteen months before the May- 
floxver landed the Pilgrims in New England, a Dutch 
man-of-war sailed up the James River and sold nine- 
teen negroes to the colonists in Virginia. 

No one seems to have questioned whether it was right or 
wrong to buy and sell human beings. Negro slaves had 
been bought and sold in Europe for more than a hundred 
years, and so it seemed natural enough to extend the trade 
to America. The tobacco crops were large and the Vir- 
ginians needed help on the plantations, so negro slavery 
slipped quietly into colonial life. 

The institution of slavery is very old. The Egyptians 
were slave owners. The Greeks made slaves of prisoners 
of war. There were slaves in Rome ; and in the Bible we 
read of every kind and condition of slave. 

Soon after the discovery of America, slave ships entered 
"every convenient harbor" in the new country, looking for 
Indians to capture and sell into servitude. Indian slavery 
was lawful for two centuries ! But the Indian slave was 
worth far less than the negro, for he was not nearly so 
docile and he very quickly pined and died in captivity. 

Negro slavery was not invented by white men; for ne- 
groes enslaved one another, and the first Africans that were 
brought in bondage to Europe, were prisoners of their own 
race that the dark chiefs exchanged, along with gold, for 
European luxuries brought them by the white traders. 

Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman to enter the 
African slave trade. In 1562 he took a cargo of Africans 

92 



SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES 93 

to Hispaniola where he sold them at such large profit that 
Queen Elizabeth got to hear of it and she, with many of her 
courtiers, became interested in the venture. Five years 
later Hawkins was sent out by royal command to capture 
more Africans and sell them into bondage. He went 
under the Queen's protection and her Majesty was to share 
the profits of the trade. 

Hawkins was not at all ashamed of the business; he 
wrote very frankly of his methods of capturing slaves. 
Once, he says, he set fire to a city "of which the huts were 
covered with dry palm leaves" and in the confusion of the 
fire he was able to seize two hundred and fifty of the in- 
habitants. 

It is impossible for us to understand such barbarity; but 
to the undeveloped Christian mind, all heathen people 
counted less than dogs. 

The reason of the great demand that grew up in America 
for negroes was that they were the only people who seemed 
able to live and labor beneath the hot sun that shone upon 
the southern colonies. 

In 1621 the first cotton seeds were planted. After that 
great numbers of slaves were imported for field labor, until 
some of the white settlers began to gi-ow uneasy and won- 
der if they had done wisely to bring so many of an alien 
race into the land; but they were far from realizing what 
a bitter harvest their beloved country was to reap as a con- 
sequence of this unwisdom. 

Attempts were made to limit the number of negroes 
brought into the colonies; but unfortunately Parliament 
would not allow this, because the slave trade had grown to 
be very profitable to England. 

After the Revolutionary War, the northern colonies did 
away with slavery. There were few negroes in the North 
and no crop that made black labor important; but in the 
South, where all the work was done by negroes, it was a 



94 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

serious matter to interfere with the system of slavery. 
Long years of struggle, crowned by the cruel sufferings of 
the Civil War, had to be lived through before slavery was 
finally abolished in America. 

In the early days of the colonies there were many white 
bond-servants, who were practically slaves for a limited 
time. Thousands of people were sent over from England, 
bound to serve for a certain number of years, at the end 
of which they were supposed to be free. All manner of 
persons came to America under this cloud of bondage: 
criminals from English prisons, children picked up in 
London streets, men and women who had been kidnaped 
by slave dealers, and prisoners of war. The Scots taken 
at the battle of Dunbar were sent out to New England and 
sold in this way. 

This seems a strange beginning for a land of liberty; 
but if the colonists had not known so well the evils of bond- 
age, they might not have been able to strive as they did 
for the freedom that is claimed to-day by every American, 
be his color black or white. 



I 



CHAPTER XIX 

EARLY DAYS IN THE COLONIES 

MANY countries were represented in the colonies 
and the emigrants had taken with them from 
their native lands customs and institutions that 
had to be adapted to the condition of the new home. Very- 
soon the people learned to use such materials as America 
could supply to make living wholesome and comfortable. 

Their houses they built of wood, instead of the stone 
that the Europeans used, because it was plentiful and easier 
to handle. The first houses were made, Indian fashion, of 
bark and earth, and some were built of rough logs; but 
when the people prospered they made the wood into planks 
and shingles and built their homes after the dignified style 
that we know as "Colonial architecture." Glass was a 
luxury in early days, for it had to be imported, and the 
windows were usually made of paper, so oiled that it let 
the light through. 

Furniture in the homes of the colonists was mostly home- 
made. Carpets were seldom seen, but a good housewife 
sanded her floors and drew patterns in the sand with a 
stick. The walls were bare in many of the houses, for 
wall paper was not made until after 1700, but some of the 
people decorated their rooms by hanging up Indian mats, 
gaily colored with the blood-red juice of the puccoon root. 
Wooden trenchers and trays were used on the tables, for 
all china had to be brought from across the ocean. Square 
blocks of wood make very good plates. Burnished pewter 
jugs and platters brightened the colonial tables; but there 
were no forks, for at that time — even in England — the 

95 



96 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

meat was cut up with a knife and put into the mouth 
with the fingers I 

There were no cooking-stoves. A great pot for boihng 
was hung from a crane over the open fire. Meat was 
roasted on a spit in front of the fire, or baked in the hot 
ashes. The baking of bread was done in a brick or stone 
oven built into the side of the chimney. 

There are few such fireplaces in America now as those 
that were built by the colonists ; huge logs could be burned 
in them, and the chimneys were so wide that a pine-tree was 
the broom used to clean them. On winter evenings, chil- 
dren popping corn or dreaming in front of the fh-e, could 
look up the chimney and see the stars winking down at 
them from the sky. 

The food in those early days was plain and simple. The 
supper of a New England family often consisted of noth- 
ing but a steaming kettle of corn-meal mush. For the 
noon meal there was more variety, for game was plentiful 
in the forests and the rivers were well stocked with fish. 
For many years it was thought dangerous to eat potatoes 
oftener than once a week, but there were pumpkins and 
sweet corn and other vegetables. Tea and coffee were for 
long unknown in the colonies and the people drank much 
more wine than Americans do now. The colonial women 
were famous cooks and proud of their skill, for cooking was 
an art that every housewife delighted in and scorned to 
leave to servants. 

Dress was then, as now, an important matter. The rich 
people sent to England for their clothes, but the poorer 
folk spun their own cloth and fashioned their garments 
from it and from soft deer-skin. The dress of the Puri- 
tans and the Quakers was always plain, as a protest against 
vanity. 

There were few books in the colonies ; and the ministers 
had what small libraries there were, for the people had 



EARLY DAYS IN THE COLONIES 97 

little time to read. There was not even a newspaper pub- 
lished until 1700 ; so the only literary treat of the week was 
the Sunday's sermon. 

When the hard-working colonists took a holiday they 
made the most of it. Sometimes they held fairs, or played 
at sports learned in other lands. Remembering the pretty 
English custom of welcoming in the May, fathers and 
mothers set up May-poles in the forests and taught their 
children to dance the quaint dances of their ancestors. 

Weddings were great times of rejoicing, the feasting 
and jollity often lasting for three days. Funerals were 
also important functions, for the guests always remained 
to eat and drink with the mourners. 

Perhaps what we would object to most seriously, if we 
had to go back and live in colonial times, would be the 
laws that were enforced to try to frighten people into 
being good. Lying was severely punished. There was a 
fine for swearing; and for a second offense the tongue 
of the profane one was publicly pinched! There were 
heavy punishments for men who did not keep the Sab- 
bath ; and drunkards were made to wear a great letter D 
tied round their necks, that their shame might be known 
to every one. 

To punish a gossiping woman, a chair was constructed 
with a long handle, so that it could be lowered into the 
water of a pond. This was called the "Ducking Stool," 
and many a victim was strapped into it and given a cold 
bath. The pillory, the stocks, and the whipping-post were 
also used to punish people; but it is not likely that this 
public shame did much toward making men better. What 
did count, however, was that the wish of the majority of 
the colonists for decency and right was so strong that they 
tried to enforce it by these quaint laws. 

A common danger from which the world suffered at the 
end of the seventeenth century was piracy. The ocean 



98 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was swarming with freebooters; they so infested the Red 
Sea and the eoast of JNIalabar that England had to send out 
men-of-war to protect the East India fleet. Even then 
many a straggler was cut off and sometimes the squadron 
was attacked in force. 

The colonists had their share of annoyance from pirates, 
and in 1695 they sent a frigate against them. Captain 
William Kidd, a Scotsman who had emigrated to New 
York, was chosen to command this Adventure Galley and 
given a free hand to fight all jiirates. 

Kidd was unfortunate and fell in with no sea-robbers; 
but it soon became rumored that he had turned to the trade 
himself. Some said that he adopted piracy of his own 
free will; but lie always claimed that he was forced into it 
by his men. His crew were a lot of desperate fellows, 
unpaid for tlieir services and greedy for wealth, so it is 
easy to believe that the fault was originally theirs rather 
than the captain's, for Kidd was a rich man. 

But the question became one of punishment and not of 
who was to blame. Orders were given to commanders of 
all squadrons that they "make it their particular care to 
pursue and seize the Adventure Galley'' and that they 
make no promise of pardon to Captain Kidd. 

The danger only served to make Kidd more lawless. 
His depredations went on and stories of the fabulous 
treasure that he was amassing were told with bated breath. 
One Moorish ship, the Quidah Merchant, which he cap- 
tured was, by his own confession, worth "a good thirty 
thousand pounds." It was laden with bales of East India 
goods, gold-dust, ingots and silver. His spoil was of all 
kinds, for once we are told he took "thirteen tubs of sugar 
candy"! 

It was hinted that the Governor of New York was in 
league with Kidd. It may be that the Captain trusted 
to the help of some such influential friend, for in July, 



EARLY DAYS IN THE COLONIES 99 

1699, he went boldly into Boston to plead for his own par- 
don. He took with him gifts of jewels for Lady Bella- 
mont, the wife of the Governor, but these presents did not 
help his cause. Bellamont received him coolly, and when 
he heard that Kidd intended to make his wife a further 
present of one thousand pounds in gold-dust and ingots, 
he grew very angry and threw the Captain into prison. 
There he lay in irons ("to try the power of dull iron 
against gold," as the Governor said) until the spring of 

1700. He was then sent to England for trial and, in 
London, hanged. 

And what of his treasure? 

It is known that once Kidd ran into Tarpaulin Cove, 
on Block Island, where he landed and buried a bale and 
two barrels of goods ; from that it is supposed that he hid 
most of his wealth along the coast, and so much of it is 
still to be found that we may all of us have the joy of hunt- 
ing for treasure whenever we are near the sea. 

Early days in the colonies were full of adventure. Life 
had its dangers and its hardships as well as its peculiar 
graces ; but all these qualities blended to shape the future 
of a great country and mold the fortunes of a strong 
people. 



CHAPTER XX 

WAES BETWEEN FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONISTS 

YQU will remember that the St. Lawrence River had 
been discovered by the French and that conse- 
quently France claimed the country round it. 

In 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec, and 
that high-lying town became the capital of all the French 
trading-posts in the New World. 

The French were more successful traders than the Eng- 
lish, for they preferred a roving life to the monotony of 
farming and they were eager to explore the country 
rather than to settle down to town building. From the 
first. Frenchmen seemed to understand the Indians better 
than the English ever did; they treated them as equals, 
adopted their customs, married their daughters, and 
thought of them more as human beings than as savages. 

This sympathy with the Red Men greatly lessened the 
danger of trading among them ; and the tireless efforts of 
the priests to convert the heathen won many Indian friends 
for France. Jesuit Fathers gave their lives, many of them 
suffering frightful martyrdom, to carry the Christian re- 
ligion into the haunts and hearts of the natives. Too much 
honor cannot be paid to the memory of these missionaries, 
who acted as explorers as well as peacemakers for France. 
Father Marquette voiced the spirit of them all when he 
said, "I did not fear death; I should have esteemed it the 
greatest happiness to have died for the glory of God." 

It was the strength and energy of such men as this that 
made the power of France almost equal to that of Eng- 

100 



FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONISTS 101 

land, although Englishmen far outnumbered Frenchmen 
in America; and it was the restless activity of the French 
that made them such formidable foes in the weary years 
of colonial war. 

While the English colonists were busy planting crops 
and defending their settlements from hostile Indians on 
the east of the Alleghanies, the French were occupied in 
establishing missions and trading-posts west of the moun- 
tains. 

A man named La Salle had explored that region and 
discovered the Ohio River. Another Frenchman, Joliet, 
reached the Mississippi in 1673, and a few years later La 
Salle claimed the country at its mouth for the French 
King, Louis XIV, and called it Louisiana. 

Now, the English also claimed the Ohio Valley because 
it joined their colonies and some of their traders had been 
accustomed to cross the mountains long before the French 
had visited the region. But the English were too weak- 
ened by civil troubles and Indian wars to protest at first, 
and rivalry for possession of the land smoldered for some 
time before ?t broke out into active bitterness. 

Trouble fii'st came over disputed fishing rights, and 
there was a show of ill feeling on the part of the English 
because the French had taken up so much of the fur trade. 
\^Tiat added a peculiar hostility to the relations between 
the French and the English colonists was the fact that the 
French were Catholics and most of the English were 
Protestants, a difference that was almost sure to spell 
war. 

In 1689 there was a controversy over the question of 
ownership of territory to the east of the Kennebec River 
in what is now the State of Maine. France claimed it 
as Champlain's discovery, while England claimed the coun- 
try as far as St. Croix. A war was the result of the dis- 
pute. It lasted for eight years and was made hideous by 



102 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the horrors of the savage methods of fighting that the 
colonists borrowed from the Indians. 

The Hurons and the Algonquin Indians were strong 
allies of the French and fought for them. The Iroquois 
Indians allied themselves to the English and fought more 
for personal revenge on the French allies than for Eng- 
lish rights. In the summer of 1689 they made their bloody 
way so near to Montreal that the French were struck with 
terror. A former governor of the colony was hurried over 
from France to help the Canadians to carry on the war. 
He decided not to attack the Iroquois, but to strike di- 
rectly at the British settlements and make the English 
colonists feel the long arm of Canada. 

Schenectady was chosen for the first object lesson. Its 
inhabitants were surprised and cut down without any 
chance to fight for their lives. 

Another of Frontenac's attacks was on Salmon Falls, in 
New Hampshire. There the people resisted bravely, but 
were overpowered and those who were not left dead were 
taken captives to Canada. Casco Bay, a trading-post in 
Maine, was also captured and burned. 

These losses roused the English colonists to a combined 
effort for revenge. A meeting of representatives was held 
in New York and an invasion of Canada was planned. 

Port Royal in Nova Scotia was taken. Quebec was 
reached but was found to be too well fortified for capture 
by the Enghsh troops. 

In 1697 a peace was declared, but it was really only a 
five years' truce, for in 1702 what is known as "Queen 
Anne's War" began. This war involved South Carolina 
in a struggle with the Spanish and Indians in Florida, 
while at the same time the Northern colonies were once 
more fighting against Canada. The victories at this time 
went to the French. The records of the dreadful raids 
they made on some of the towns of the English make a 



FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONISTS 103 

miserable blot on colonial history. It was during this war 
that Deerfield, in western Massachusetts, was taken. 

The people of Deerfield had been warned that danger 
threatened them. For weeks they had lived in fear, never 
going to bed at night without dreading what their fate 
might be before morning. They fortified their houses as 
best they could and sentinels were always supposed to be 
on the lookout for the enemy. But when the blow fell, 
one midnight in February, the faithless sentinels had left 
the gates of the palisade unguarded and the yelling of the 
Indians was the first warning the people had that their 
time of peril had come. The snow was four feet deep. 
Out of their warm beds and houses the inhabitants of the 
ill-fated village were di'iven, helpless before the two hun- 
dred French and one hundred and forty-two Indians. 
Their homes were set on fire and all but the church and one 
house burned before their eyes. 

Forty-seven of the people were killed and a hundred 
and twelve were taken prisoners. When the sun rose above 
the smoking ruins of what had been a peaceful little town, 
a long black hne began to move away from Deerfield to- 
ward the forest. It was the victors driving their prisoners 
before them through the snow to Canada. That was a 
horrible march! Two men starved to death on the way. 
If a woman or child complained of cold or hunger, the blow 
of a tomahawk silenced her forever. Eunice Williams, 
the wife of the minister, fainted from exhaustion. This so 
enraged her captors that they killed her in the presence of 
her husband and five children. 

One of the Williams children was only seven years old 
when she was captured. Separated from her brothers and 
sisters, she was taken to the "Village of Praying Indians" 
near Montreal. Attempts were made to ransom her, but 
in vain. She grew up a Catholic and was married to a 
Cahnewaga Chief. Once she visited Deerfield after it 



104 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was rebuilt, but if you had seen her you could scarcely have 
told that she was a white woman, for her dress was that of 
an Indian squaw and her ways were those of the Indians. 
The friends who had known her when she was a little child 
were very sad to see her so changed. A fast day was pro- 
claimed in the village and all the people prayed earnestly 
for her "deliverance from a strange religion and a savage 
hfe"; but in spite of these prayers she returned (as any 
mother would have done) to her wigwam and her little 
Indian babies. 

A Grand Alliance had been formed, in 1701, by Eng- 
land, Holland, and the German Empire, to prevent the 
union of France and Spain, and for twelve years the "War 
of the Spanish Succession" had been raging; but in 1713 
the treaty of Utrecht brought a much needed peace to the 
continent of Europe. In the American colonies, however, 
there was no let-up of hostilities; for both English and 
French were intriguing constantly with the Indians, and 
wars were frequent. 

In 1744 ships belonging to private persons were sent 
out by the French from Cape Breton Island to plunder the 
ships of New England. As an answer to this new line of 
attack, the Governor of Massachusetts sent four thousand 
New England militia against Louisbourg, the Cape 
Breton stronghold. They were raw troops; even the of- 
ficers hardly knew the meaning of a military term; but 
they were wonderfully courageous and their earnestness 
made up for their lack of training. Target- shooting was 
one of the amusements in New England and the soldiers 
were sure marksmen. They were so skilful in the use of 
their muskets that the French could not use their guns and 
the fortress had no choice but to surrender. This was a 
splendid victory for the little army of farmers and mer- 
chants and it brought great pride to the hearts of New 
Englanders. 



FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONISTS 105 

Four years later Louisbourg was given back to the 
French in exchange for other advantages; but the taking 
of it had served to give the EngHsh colonists confidence in 
themselves. 

And what of the land beyond the Alleghanies? You 
ma}^ be sure that France had not forgotten it. In 1749 a 
small company of Frenchmen, led by Captain Celeron de 
Bienville, traveled about three thousand miles for the pur- 
pose of formally asserting their king's claim to the Valley 
of the Ohio. 

America must have been a romantic and wonderful 
country when Celeron journeyed in the wilderness of the 
Middle West. Buffalo browsed in rich meadows of blue- 
grass and wild clover, while elk and deer ranged through 
the stately forests. The monotony of the river-sides was 
broken by Indian villages. 

The natives received the visitors without much en- 
thusiasm, although they listened to what Celeron had to 
say of their "Father Onontio" — the French King — and 
drank a good deal of brandy at his expense. The French- 
man told the Red Men that the French were their true 
and only brothers and that the traders who came from be- 
yond the mountains were strangers and foes. The time 
was not yet ripe, however, for the Indians to believe this 
and they were in no hurry to be rid of English traders. It 
was not until several years later that they were roused to 
active interest in the French point of view. 

The travelers carried with them a number of leaden 
plates and tin shields engraved with the arms of France 
and with inscriptions on them that bore witness to the 
French King's reestablished possession of the land. 
When his party reached the Alleghany River, Celeron 
buried the first of these plates in the ground and nailed a 
shield to a tree. 

Lately one of these leaden plates was cast up by a 



106 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

flooded river. To-day it is carefully treasured in an 
American museum as a record of the fruitless boast of the 
old French pioneers who dreamed that France should own 
a tract of country in the New World, larger than France 
itself. 

For more than fifty years the rival claims of French and 
English for possession of the Ohio Valley went unsettled. 
Then France, to clinch the matter, attempted to connect 
Canada and Louisiana by a chain of forts, thinking that if 
they could get military control of the territory they could 
hold it against all others. It was this definite move on the 
part of the French that made the English colonists see that 
they must bestir themselves. It was too late for treaty 
settlement and it soon became evident that the question of 
who owned the Ohio Valley could be answered only by the 
sword. 



CHAPTER XXI 

GENERAL BRxU)DOCk's DEFEAT, AND THE DRIVING OUT 
OF THE ACADIANS 

AN important city stands to-day at the point where 
the Alleghany and the JNIonongahela Rivers join 
to form the Ohio. Great furnaces light the sky 
for miles, and the smoke and fame of Pittsburgh carry far. 
Little more than a century ago no glowing furnaces nor 
looming city was there, but only a rough fort made of logs 
and a few cabins built in a clearing of the forest. 

This was a French fort, named Du Quesne, after a 
governor of Canada, the most important link in the chain 
of forts planned to connect the St. Lawrence with the 
Mississippi. 

The English had been slow to appreciate the value of the 
Ohio Valley; but when once they realized its importance 
and that France was taking possession of it, they were in- 
dignant. The people of Virginia were especially roused 
because, by their colonial charter, they had a claim to this 
western country. 

Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent 
George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, as 
his representative to request the French to withdraw from 
English territory. 

Washington had spent some time on the frontier as a 
survej^or and had learned the ways of the wilderness. He 
safely accompHshed his errand, although he met with 
dangers and hardships that would have stopped a less 
cool-headed young man. After handing over Dinwiddle's 

107 



108 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dispatch to the French representatives and receiving an 
answer to the effect that the French would stay where they 
were, Washington started on his return journey. He left 
his Indians and other servants to follow slowly with the 
baggage and, taking for his sole companion a frontiersman, 
named Gist, he hurried off toward Virginia, bearing the 
first formal note of defiance from the French to the Eng- 
lish. 

It was the depth of winter and about four hundred miles 
of pathless wilderness had to be traversed. The frost was 
often very keen and then again came days of dripping 
thaws. Hostile Indians might be met with at any moment. 
On one occasion a Red INIan did hide in a thicket only a 
few paces from the trail and fii-ed point-blank at Wash- 
ington, but without hurting him. He caught the fellow, 
tied his arms, and marched him before him for a whole day 
so that he could not bring his friends in force upon their 
track. 

Washington and his companion expected to cross the 
Alleghany River on the ice, but when they reached the 
river they found that its surface was a mass of floating 
blocks of loose ice. They made a raft with the help of the 
"one poor hatchet" they had brought with them and em- 
barked in the dusk of a winter's evening on the dangerous 
passage. In midstream a block of ice knocked Washing- 
ton off the raft into the freezing water, and the two men 
had eventually to spend the night upon an island with their 
clothing frozen stiff upon them ! But, undaunted by frost- 
bitten toes and fingers, they pressed on with the coming 
of day. They pushed through gi'ay forests hung with 
icicles, hearing now the hungry howling of wolves or the 
soft pat of moccasined feet as a straggling band of Indians 
approached the strangers with caution. INIore than once 
the travelers saw the sickening sight of scalped corpses 
marking the trail of some savage war party. At last, how- 



GENERAL BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT 109 

ever, Washington and Gist arrived on the borders of in- 
habited Virginia, where Washington got fresh horses and 
clothes and rode on with his letter to Dinwiddie at Wil- 
liamsburg, having been away just three months. 

The Governor decided that since his request had been 
refused he would enforce it. An army was speedily got 
together and sent out under Washington's command to 
di'ive the French out of Fort Du Quesne. 

It was tedious traveling for that little company of Vir- 
ginians, for they had to stop and make a road tlirough the 
forest over which to bring their cannon; and long before 
they reached their destination Indian scouts brought word 
that the French were seeking them, to "clear the English 
out of the country." 

Washington halted where he was, near a trading-station 
called Great JMeadows, and built a crude entrenchment 
which he named Fort Necessity. There the French at- 
tacked him on July 3, 1754. As soon as the fighting be- 
gan, Washington's Indians deserted and his Virginia sol- 
diers were far outnumbered by the French. The guns 
were almost useless, for a heavy rain fell all that day, and 
Washington's men had to stand in water and mud to their 
knees; their bread was gone and they had nothing to eat 
but some tainted meat. But that ragged regiment, in 
homespun and hunting shirts, half starved and soaked to 
the skin, and with ammunition failing, fought bravely on 
until evening, when Washington was forced to surrender. 
He made terms with the enemy by which he was allowed to 
return to Virginia. 

England was at last roused to action. "It was the vol- 
ley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of 
America," says a great statesman, "that set the world on 
fire." 

It was decided to send over British troops to drive the 
French from the Valley of the Ohio, and such soldiers as 



110 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the colonies could furnish were expected to reinforce the 
British. 

General Braddock was chosen leader. He was a veteran 
of forty j^ears' service and at the battle of Culloden he had 
proved his valor and good generalship. It was believed 
that he would soon quell the French uprising in America. 
But although he was a brilliant general in the game of 
war as it was carried on in Europe, he was quite unpre- 
pared to deal with the irregularities of war in America, 
where distances were so great and where the enemy obeyed 
none of the unwritten laws of the game. Braddock was 
the first British general ever called upon to lead an im- 
portant campaign in a far-away wilderness and it is not 
surprising that he did not make a success of the under- 
taking. 

The very dress of the British soldiers was against them 
in forest warfare. Their red coats could never go un- 
noticed, and each shining gun-barrel and every spotless 
buckle would proclaim them to the watchful ej^es of In- 
dians or hunters. The long-tailed coats were much in the 
way too ; and the long hair which men of the period wore 
must have been a great trouble to the soldiers. 

The colonists, however, were gi*eatly impressed by the 
splendor of the British troops when they landed in Alex- 
andria. They had never seen such well-disciplined sol- 
diers, and the people thought that the very sight of them 
would be enough to make the French afraid. 

General Braddock was not so favorably impressed b^'^the 
appearance of the American troops. Their half-Indian 
way of fighting shocked him. Each man was differently 
armed from his neighbor, and the colonial soldiers were 
without uniform. Their haphazard dress greatly amused 
the British officers. It was at this time that Dr. Schuck- 
burgh, a fun-loving British surgeon, wrote the song, 
Yankee Doodle, and gravely dedicated it to the American 



GENERAL BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT 111 

soldiers. "Yankee" was the way the Indians pronounced 
""EngHsh," or rather the French word "Anglais," and it 
was the name given to the people of New England early in 
their history. 

The Yankees saw the fun, for they could always take a 
joke at their own expense, and so the absurd words sung 
to an old English tune became popular. The chorus, 

"Yankee Doodle, keep it up 
Yankee Doodle dandy; 
Mind the music and the step 
And with the girls be handy." 

was soon familiar throughout the colonies. 

General Braddock set to work at once to try to teach the 
Americans to fight in European fashion. Hearing much 
praise of George Washington's bravery, he invited him to 
join his staff, an offer that young Washington gladly ac- 
cepted, for he was eager to wipe out the memory of his 
defeat at Fort Necessity. 

With perfect confidence in his success, Braddock 
marched his men forward, in military order, toward Fort 
Du Quesne. He paid no attention to the warning of 
shrewd Benjamin Franklin, who predicted that the line 
of the army "would be cut like thread into several pieces" 
by the lurking Indians before he could reach the fort at 
the head of the Ohio. Braddock was so sure of victory 
and of the invincibility of his troops that he foolishly re- 
fused to safeguard them from surprise by sending out 
scouting parties. Washington knew the danger, however. 
"We shall have more to do," he said, "than go up the hill 
and come down." 

On the 9th of July, 1755, when the army was only eight 
miles from Fort Du Quesne, the war-cry of the French 
allies was heard. The road of the English was through 



112 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

a ravine, with high chffs on either side. When the firing 
of the enemy began the soldiers waved their hats and 
shouted "God save the King!" but the colonists, who under- 
stood Indian warfare, sheltered behind trees, much to the 
disgust of the general, who bade them "Come out into the 
open field like Englishmen!" 

The scarlet coats of the soldiers made easy targets for 
the hidden enemy. General Braddock exposed himself 
fearlessly, rallying his men and fighting in the front of 
the battle. For three hours the confiict lasted, until Brad- 
dock fell mortally wounded. "Who would have thought 
it?" the poor man murmured; and just before he died he 
said, "We shall better know how to deal with them another 
time." But the valiant general had learned his lesson too 
late. 

Eight hundred men were lost in this encounter. Wash- 
ington alone was unliurt of all the ofiicers on Braddock's 
stafi:'. It was he who saved what was left of the army and 
made retreat possible, although he had four horses shot 
under him, and four bullets pierced his clothes. "Who is 
Mr. Washington f Lord Halifax is said to have asked a 
few months later, and he continued, "I know nothing of 
him, but that they say he behaved in Braddock's action as 
bravely as if he really loved the whistling of bullets." We 
can only think that the life of this young aide-de-camp was 
spared because of the great work that he still had to do for 
his country. 

Until Braddock's defeat, France and England had not 
been openly at war, in spite of the rivah-y in their colonies; 
but now war was declared between the two countries and 
there began that struggle that was to take from France 
not only the Ohio Valley but Canada as well. 

During "King William's War" Nova Scotia, or Acadia 
as it was then called, had been taken from the French. 
Later it was recaptured by them ; but in the time of "Queen 



GENERAL BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT 113 

Anne's War" it was ceded to Great Britain. The inhabi- 
tants of the country had no voice in the matter and it was 
with difficulty that they were made to take the oath of al- 
legiance to the British Government. 

The Acadians were a home-loving, simple people, who 
spoke French and kept to their French customs. It was 
believed that they secretly took sides with France in the 
wars with England after they were English subjects in 
name ; but this charge could never be fully proved against 
them. 

The British authorities decided to put a stop to any 
possible disloyalty on the part of the Acadians by breaking 
up their colony and scattering the people. 

On the 5th of September, of that same year that had 
seen Braddock's defeat, all the able-bodied men in Acadia 
were summoned to the parish chm-ches to hear a royal 
proclamation read by the King's officers. The peasants 
set out from their homes in holiday mood, little suspecting 
the grave sentence that awaited them. When they under- 
stood the decree — that their lands and live-stock were for- 
feited to the British crown and that they themselves were 
to be shipped out of the country — the unhappy people were 
too astonished at first to believe their ears, and when they 
realized that they had heard aright, their first thought was 
of flight; but it was too late to escape. Outside the 
churches stood blue-coated New England soldiers with 
loaded muskets, and the unfortunate farmers saw that they 
had been caught in a trap. 

The transports for removing the Acadians into exile 
were slow in arriving and until they came the people were 
kept close prisoners by the soldiers. INIany of the heart- 
sick Acadians had to look on while their houses and barns 
were burned by the command of the officers. 

It was a pitiful fate for these peasants whose possible 
crime may have been loyalty to the country from which 



114 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

they were descended. About six thousand persons in all 
were sent away from Acadia and distributed among the 
other colonies. Their wanderings were wide. Some of 
them managed to get to Louisiana, and some to inland 
Canada. A few, after great hardships, made their way- 
back to Acadia; but most of them lived out their lives in 
English colonies. The stern people of ]Massachusetts re- 
ceived them with marked kindness and it is strange that the 
exiles who fared the worst were those who went to Hve 
among their own countrymen, the French ! 

In his beautiful poem '"Evangeline," Longfellow tells of 
the wanderings of two Acadian lovers and of the hard- 
ships that they met and overcame. The setting out of the 
banished people from their native land is best described in 
the poet's words : 

*' . . . on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, 
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile, 
Exile without an end, and without an example in story. 
Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed ; 
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind 

from the northeast 
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks 

of Newfoundland. 
Friendless, homeless, hopeless, thej wandered from citv 

to city." 

We are apt to feel so much sympathy for the Acadians 
that the British treatment of them appears to us to have 
been remarkably cruel, but it is fair to remember that if 
these people were guilty of treason the government had no 
choice but to punish them. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE TAKING OF CANADA 

THE first years of war between the French and the 
Enghsh saw France everywhere victorious. 
In America the feeble attempts of the British 
to take the forts at Crown Point, Niagara, and Louis- 
bourg, were dismal failures. 

In 1757 the French general, the Marquis ^lontcalm, 
captiu-ed Fort Wilham Henry, on Lake George, one of the 
most important English posts. While the British were 
marching out of this fortress they were attacked by In- 
dians, and fifteen hundred men, women, and children were 
murdered. The fact that [Montcalm apparently did noth- 
ing to stop such butchery, has left an unpleasant stain on 
his memory. 

In England the news of each fresh disaster helped to 
inflame the people against a government that permitted 
these failures. Public opinion grew so indignant that the 
King, George II, was forced to appoint a new ministry. 
This was the real turning-point of afl'airs, for it brought 
WiUiam Pitt — afterward Earl of Chatham — into power. 
Under his wise direction failure gave place to victory. 

The English colonies in America had begim to despair. 
Their faith in the mother country was badly shaken and 
fear of France was growing upon them ; but Pitt soon won 
their confidence. In response to his call for troops, an 
army of fifty thousand men was raised and plans for rout- 
ing the French were at once put into action. 

The troops were divided, in order that they might attack 
several of the French forts at one time. 

115 



116 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

A siege of Louisbourg was begun on June 2nd, 1758. 
The French garrison numbered only three thousand men, 
while the attacking party were fourteen thousand strong. 
For three weeks the French held out, but then the town was 
forced to surrender. 

Under the leadership of Lord Howe and General Aber- 
crombie, fifteen thousand men had crossed Lake George, to 
attack a fort on Lake Champlain. 

Kobert Louis Stevenson, in one of his poems, makes an 
Indian guide tell his hero the name of this fort in these 
words : 

** 'Since the Frenchmen have been here — 

They have called it Sault-Marie, 
But that is a name for priests, 

And not for you and me, 
It went by another word,' 

Quoth he of the shaven head : 
*It was called Ticonderoga 

In the days of the great dead.* " 

This attack on Ticonderoga was to be a failure for the 
English. Montcalm was in charge of the fort and his gen- 
eralship was of a better qualitj^ than that of Abercrombie. 
Lord Howe might have led the British troops to victory, 
but he was killed in a preliminary skirmish. His death was 
a great blow to the English, for he was one of the few men 
who had been quick to see the absiu-dity of waging war 
in America after the cumbersome fashion adopted in Eu- 
rope. He had done much to lighten the baggage of the 
soldiers and to make their dress more comfortable. He 
snipped off the long coat-tails of the infantry, browned 
their gleaming gun-barrels and cut their hair short. He 
understood, too, the value of human life and it is certain 
that he would never have permitted a useless slaughter of 
the army. But Lord Howe was dead and the entire com- 



THE TAKING OF CANADA 117 

mand of the British troops at Ticonderoga fell upon Aber- 
crombie, who proved unfit to cope with the difficulties of 
the position. 

The French were stationed on the summit of a hill. 
Abercrombie ordered his soldiers to charge up this hill with 
their bayonets fixed. It was a sad proceeding, for the 
troops became entangled in a breastwork of fallen trees 
and rubbish, where they were fired upon by the French, 
who stood above them in perfect security. Two thousand 
of the English were killed or wounded, and by evening 
Abercrombie was in a state of "extremest fright and con- 
sternation," and he hurried his troops back to their boats 
and put Lake George between himself and the French with 
as much speed as possible. 

After this failure Abercrombie could not hope to take 
Crown Point, the important fort that stood where Kingston 
in Canada now stands ; but both Crown Point and Ticon- 
deroga were captured in the course of the next year. 

A third division of the army had been sent against Fort 
Frontenac, which surrendered almost at once, as its gar- 
rison was too small for resistance. This was an impor- 
tant prize, because Frontenac was the depot from which 
Fort Du Quesne got provisions. When the French at 
Du Quesne found that they were cut off, they left their 
post and fled down the Ohio River. In this way it hap- 
pened that General Forbes, who had been appointed to 
capture Du Quesne, walked into possession of the aban- 
doned fort without any one to dispute his right. The 
name of the fort was changed from Du Quesne to Pitt; 
and that is how we get the Pittsburgh of to-day. 

With their forts in the Ohio Valley the French lost the 
connection between Canada and Louisiana. The Indians, 
who had been their allies, refused to help them after the 
English were in possession of the main roads into their 
country, and Pitt realized that if England could take the 



118 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

stronghold of Quebec, the power of France in America 
would be broken. 

To take Quebec would be no easy matter. The for- 
tress is built on a bluff that rises two hundred feet, sheer 
above the St. Lawrence River. Its natural position made 
it very strong, and the fort was held by that general who 
had proved himself to be a dangerous foe, Montcalm. 
Pitt was some time in deciding to whom he should entrust 
this important commission. He finally picked out a man 
named James Wolfe, who had attracted attention at the 
siege of Louisbourg by his energy and daring. 

Wolfe was only thirty-two years old. He was a 
strange-looking man, with fiery-red hair, and he was sickly 
and undersized; but the eyes that burned above his up- 
turned nose were the eyes of a born leader. In spite of 
his narrow shoulders he possessed a resourcefulness and 
bravery that could be trusted to overcome great diffi- 
culties. 

In May, 1759, Admiral Durell was sent over from 
England to stop French supply and war ships from sail- 
ing up the St. Lawrence River. A month later Wolfe 
followed with the main army. It was a hazardous busi- 
ness for British seamen to sail the waters of the St. Law- 
rence without French pilots to help them, but they did it, 
greatly to the surprise of the French. "The enemy has 
passed sixty ships of war where we dare not risk a vessel 
of a hundred tons by night or by day !" they exclaimed. 

Majestically the British fleet came to anchor in front 
of Quebec; but before they had been there twenty-four 
hours Montcalm attempted to destroy the unwelcome vis- 
itors. 

All day a storm had raged, but the evening fell calm 
and moonless. Toward midnight a cluster of ships drifted 
silently out of the gloom and bore down upon the Brit- 



THE TAKING OF CANADA 119 

ish men-of-war; they were eight floating mines packed 
with explosives. Fortunately for the British the French 
sailors fired the ships too soon; but the flaming monsters, 
drifting down the black river, were appalhng. The glare 
lit up the river cliffs, shone upon the roofs of the city, upon 
the distant hills, and picked out the dark hulls of the 
English ships. It was a wonderful and awful spectacle; 
but it turned out to be almost as harmless as a display of 
fireworks, because the boats from the British fleet were 
quickly in the water and the sailors were pulling with 
steady daring to head off the drifting danger. They 
grappled the fire ships and towed them to the shore, where 
they were left to splutter and smoke and flame until they 
sank into a twisted mass of harmless wreckage. The only 
harm that the floating volcanoes accomplished was to burn 
alive one of their own captains and six of his men who 
failed to escape in their boats. 

When Wolfe arrived the British began a bombardment 
of Quebec. The town at the foot of the cliff was soon 
laid waste, but the grim fort on the height went unliarmed 
after two months' siege. 

Disappointed by repeated failure to destroy the fort, 
and after being several times repulsed by Montcalm, 
Wolfe was so overtired and unhappy that he was taken 
very ill. But "spirit will carry a man through anything," 
he said in talking of a friend ; and it was spirit alone that 
upheld the gallant general himself, who, ill as he was, 
never wavered in his determination to take Quebec. 
When on the 1st of September he rose from his sick bed, 
he had made up his mind to undertake one of the most 
daring feats in history. 

In exploring the coast he had discovered a path that led 
up the steep rock toward the fort. This approach was 
so narrow and difficult that it had seemed impossible to 



120 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the French that the enemy would think of using it; con- 
sequently it was weakly guarded. But around this path, 
Wolfe built his plans. 

He changed the position of the fleet, so that the French 
should think that the next attack would be made at the 
mouth of the Charles River, below the city. There at 
nightfall the guns of Saundor's ships bombarded the Old 
Town of Quebec so fiercely that the French had no atten- 
tion to give to a few darkened ships that lay gray bhu's 
on the water above the town : but in these innocent seeming 
vessels waited the main portion of the British army. 

Had [Montcalm been looking up the river, instead of 
down, he miuht have seen a sin2:le liuht Q-leam suddenlv 
from the Sutlicrlamrs maimnast, the signal for one thou- 
sand and six hundred men to drop quietly into their boats. 
At two o'clock the tide began to ebb ; then a second lantern 
flashed a command from Wolfe's ship, and softly the 
boats pushed otf to drift downstream under the shadow of 
the high northern shore. 

It Mas a calm night and the boats, mo^-ing in long pro- 
cession, passed as silently as phantoms. Once they were 
challenged by a sentry, but a Highland otlicer answered, in 
perfect French, that they were a provision convoy bound 
for Quebec, and this satisfied the challenger, for French 
provision boats had been in the habit of stealing down 
under cover of night. 

Wliile the boat that carried General Wolfe floated 
through the dark, he recited in a hushed voice a poem 
that had been lately sent to him from England. It was 
Gray's Elcgif Written in a Countn/ Churchifard. "I 
would prefer being the author of that poem, to the glory 
of beating the French to-morrow!" he exclaimed. The 
courage that made it possible for him to think of poetry, 
amid the excitement of that night's undertaking, shows 
why Pitt had chosen him for this diflicult task. This man 



THE TAKING OF CANADA 121 

of sickly body, with his love for literature, may not have 
had the usual qualifications of a great general, but he pos- 
sessed the p:reatness of a dauntless soul. 

The boats landed on the beach of a little bay that now 
bears Wolfe's name, at the foot of the zigzag path to the 
fort. In silence the soldiers started to climb the rough 
way. Wolfe's friend, Captain Howe, a breather to I^ord 
Howe who fell at Ticonderoga, went first with a small 
body of picked men and disposed of the feeble French 
guard at the top. The path was so steep in places that 
they had to pull themselves up by the help of bushes or 
overhanging rocks. All night armed men were clamber- 
ing up the narrow foothold, and morning saw the British 
army ready for battle on the Plains of Abraham, the table- 
land in front of the fortress of Quebec. 

It was about six o'clock when Montcalm was told that 
the enemy was there. All night he had waited, booted and 
spurred and with his horse saddled at the door, expecting 
an attack, and yet the English had surprised him in spite 
of his caution I It was hard to believe. But bravely he 
led out an attacking party from the fort. He must have 
known, however, that he stood small chance of victory 
against a foe who had overcome such heavy odds to fight 
him. 

Wolfe, ordering his men not to fire until they saw the 
white of the Frenchmen's eyes, advanced to battle. He 
put himself at the head of his army. Twice he was 
wounded, yet he pressed on, cheering the soldiers forward 
until a third shot struck him in the breast. Then he called 
to an officer, "Support me; let not my brave fellows see 
me drop !" 

They carried him out of the range of fire, and suddenly 
the officer who was holding him cried out : 

"They run!" 

"Who run?" Wolfe roused from his pain to ask. 



122 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"The enemy, sir," was the answer. "Egad, they give 
way everywhere." 

"God be praised!" the general sighed. "I now die in 
peace." 

The inspiration given them by Wolfe's courage did not 
fail the British troops, whose steadiness had won the day 
for England. 

The French general, INIontcalm, equallj^ as brave as 
Wolfe, was mortally wounded and died the day after the 
battle, glad not to live to see Quebec in the hands of the 
English. 

If any of the men were living who had been in the boat 
with Wolfe, as it floated down the river in the starlight, 
and had heard him repeat Gray's poem, one of the verses 
must have recurred to them the night after the battle, when 
the English general lay dead and the French general was 
dying: 

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
Await alike the inevitable hour; 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

With the fall of Quebec, the power of France in Amer- 
ica was practically at an end. 

Canada became a British province, and all the land that 
the French had claimed in what is now the United States, 
except Louisiana, passed into the possession of the colonies 
and the mother country by a treaty that was drawn up on 
February 10, 1763. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

PONTIAC'S WAH 

THE gaining of Canada and of the Ohio Valley 
did not bring immediate peace to the colonies. 
The Indians west of the Alleghanies had no love 
for Englishmen. The French had been their friends, had 
called them "brothers," but the English had seldom treated 
them with the equality that the proud chiefs demanded, 
and the Red Men were enraged to think of Englishmen 
occupying the old French forts. "If the French and their 
kindly priests must go," they thought, "no other nation 
shall take their place." 

Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas, was the most intelligent 
Indian leader of the time. He was burdened with no 
great fear of the English, for had he not led the attack 
against General Braddock? and did he not remember 
how easily the British troops had been driven back by 
the Indians on that occasion? "The English mean to 
make slaves of us," he thought, "by occupying so many 
posts in our country," and he reasoned that if the Indians 
were to keep their freedom, it was better for them to as- 
sert their liberty at once, than to wait until the English 
were fully established in the country. 

At a great council held on the banks of a river below 
Detroit, Pontiac described to the chiefs of other tribes a 
dream in which he said the Great Spirit had sent a mes- 
senger to him, commanding that the Indians cast aside the 
weapons, the manufactured articles, and the rum that the 
white men had brought, and, with help from above, drive 

123 



124 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the dogs in red (the soldiers in their scarlet uniforms) 
from every post in the country. The credulous Indians 
listened with awe to this message from on high and left the 
council ready to obey the summons to war. 

The Canadians encouraged the Indians to resist the 
English invasion. They said that the French King had 
been sleeping and that was why France had met with such 
heavy losses; "but he will soon wake," they told the sav- 
ages ; "then the French will regain all that they have lost 
for a time. The King will then reward the friends of 
France and will love and cherish the Indians." 

The land of the Ottawas was the country between Lake 
Erie and Lake ]Michigan. Captain Rodgers, who had 
done splendid work in protecting the English frontier dur- 
ing the wars with France, was sent with two hundred of 
his rangers to carry banners to the far away posts in the 
Ottawa country. He was stopped by an Indian, who said : 
"Pontiac is the Chief and Lord of this country you are in; 
wait till he can see you with his own eyes." 

When the Chief came he was angry. "How dare you 
enter my country without my leave?" he said. 

Rodgers explained that he was there with no thought 
of harm to the Indians, but only to remove the French 
from the territory. Pontiac pretended to be pacified. 
Pie even smoked the calumet, or peace-pipe, with the 
American leader; but when Rodgers was gone, messen- 
gers were sent to the Chippeway, the Wyandot, the Sen- 
eca, and Pottawattomie Indians, carrying belts of red 
beads and tomahawks stained with blood. This was the 
formal invitation of the Ottawas to the other tribes, asking 
them to join in making war against the English. 

In his savage way, Pontiac was a great general. He 
planned to have several forts attacked on the same day; 
each chief was to lead his tribe against the fort in his im- 
mediate neighborhood, kill the whites and take possession 




'PONTIAC UE.SCKll'.tl) A DKEAM IN WHICH THE GREAT SPIRIT COMMANDED THAT 
TFIE INDIAN DRIVE 'THE D()(;S IN RED' FROM EVERY POST IN THE COUNTRY" 



PONTIAC'S WAR 125 

of the stronghold. Pontiac was himself to attack the im- 
portant post at Detroit. 

His scheme for gaining entrance to the fort was well 
thought out. Some days before the 7th of May, 1763 
(the date agreed upon for the general attack) he went to 
Detroit, accompanied by several of his braves, and asked 
permission to give an exhibition of Indian dancing. The 
request was granted, for the officers were thankful for any 
amusement. 

Admitted to the fort the Ottawas went through their 
savage dances; but while they capered and danced, they 
were taking note of everything, looking for the weak places 
in the walls, counting the guns and spying out many se- 
crets of the enemy. When they had found out all they 
wished to know, Pontiac and his men went quietly away. 
But he intended to return and get his armed warriors 
inside the fort. The braves were to go to Detroit, when 
the time came, with guns hidden under their blankets and 
they were to ask leave to hold a council inside the fort. 
The permission would probablj'^ be granted and once within 
the walls, the Indians expected to have little difficulty in 
killing the white officers and surprising the soldiers into 
surrender. 

It was a crafty scheme, and Pontiac waited impatiently 
to carry it out, little di-eaming that his elaborate plan was 
to be upset by one of his own people. 

Among the Indian women there was a girl who had 
often gone to the fort to sell berries to the men and to take 
them the pretty sweet-grass baskets that made such ac- 
ceptable gifts for wives and sweethearts at home in Eng- 
land. The English officers always welcomed this slim 
brown maiden kindly, treating her with a courtesy that was 
very dear to her wild heart; so when she heard that the 
white men were to be foully murdered, she was in great 
distress. Well she knew that if she warned the English- 



126 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

men of their danger, she would probably have to pay for 
her daring with her life. The poor girl was very much 
frightened ; yet she set out bravely to help her friends. 

With a pair of elk-skin moccasins under her arm she 
went to the fort and told the sentinel that she had a present 
for Major Gladwyn. She was led into the hall where the 
officers were at dinner and with native grace she presented 
the beautiful moccasins to the Major; but then her courage 
failed her and she went away with her warning unspoken. 
Her troubled face, however, attracted the attention of the 
sentinel at the gate and he, guessing that something was 
wrong, talked to the girl and persuaded her to go back. 
She returned and with true courage told the officers of 
their threatened danger. In their gratitude to the Indian 
girl for her timely warning, the English promised her pro- 
tection from her own people. 

WJien Pontiac appeared the next day with fifty war- 
riors, all carrying concealed weapons, he found the sol- 
diers drawn up in battle line and the officers prepared for 
his reception. Then the Chief knew he had been betrayed ; 
and as the English refused to fight unless the Indians be- 
gan the battle, he and his men went away to get ready for 
open warfare. 

This first failure only helped to infuriate the Indians. 
The other forts were attacked with bitter energy. Fort 
Sandusky was burned by the Wyandots and the soldiers 
killed. The Chippeways murdered almost all the people 
at Fort Mackinaw; and Michillimackinac was taken by 
a ruse. 

It was a holiday and the Indians were playing ball in 
front of the fort. The soldiers had come out to see the 
fun, and a crowd of Indian women were also onlookers at 
the game. Suddenly the ball was thrown inside the gate 
of the fort. The Indians made a rush for it, and as they 
passed their squaws the men snatched hatchets that had 



PONTIAC'S WAR 127 

been hidden under the women's blankets, and rushed into 
the fort. The soldiers were entirely unprepared for an at- 
tack and in the surprise and confusion they were killed. 

So thoroughly did the Indians do their work that in a 
short time only three forts remained to the English in 
the West. Detroit managed to hold out against Pon- 
tiac, for the fort was well provisioned and so able to stand 
the siege, although the warlike Chief camped at its very 
gates. Fort Pitt was surrounded; but there also the white 
men succeeded in withstanding the attack of the savages. 

For many months the English knew no peace. Pon- 
tiac became the most dreaded name in the West. The 
settlers on the frontier suffered greatly from Indian raids 
and it was feared that the victorious Red Men might fall 
upon the towns of the colonies and wipe out the white 
men as they had so often threatened to do. 

There was no adequate force of soldiers in the colonies 
to protect them, because at the close of the war between 
France and England "The Royal American Regiment," 
the army that Pitt had raised to protect British rights, had 
been mostly disbanded; but such troops as could be got 
together were hurried out. 

One column of five hundred men, led by Bouquet, was 
sent to relieve Detroit. But long before the fort was 
reached the American troops were set upon by Indians 
near Bushy Run, in Pennsylvania, and a two days' battle 
was fought. Bouquet showed his wise leadership by the 
way in which he treated the Indians to their own methods 
of fighting and won by strategy what he could never have 
gained by force, since his men were far outnumbered by 
the savages. He came away from that bloody battle hav- 
ing inflicted a defeat upon the Indians that so discour- 
aged the Red ^len that they had little wish to carry on 
the war. 

After this Pontiac's position was not enviable. The 



128 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

chiefs who had been his friends when it seemed that he 
might work a miracle for them all, now left him. They 
were weary of what they believed to be a useless struggle 
and they turned their attention to patching up a kind of 
peace with the English. 

Pontiac, the last of the gi'cat chiefs, broken and dis- 
couraged, had to flee for his life. He went for refuge to 
the Illinois Indians and dwelt among them until he died. 
He cannot but remind us of Philip, the Wampanoag 
Chief, who a hundred years before had terrorized the peo- 
ple of New England. Like him, this western savage de- 
served pity as well as condemnation, for he had been born 
a prince in a country that he loved, and he had to see the 
land of his fathers taken over by a people whom he feared 
and disliked. The dignity and savage royalty of Pontiac 
made him a mournful figure — a hero fighting for a lost 
cause. 

In 1764 Pontiac's War came to an end and the frontier 
entered upon a period of rest; but it was not to last for 
long. Even then a great shadow was brooding over Amer- 
ica, and within ten years a bitter quarrel between the 
colonies and the mother country had brought about the 
Revolutionary War, with its fresh Indian horrors, added 
to the sad spectacle of English speaking people at war 
with one another. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 

IN a village of Northamptonshire, in England, there 
stands an old house that has a peculiar interest for 
Americans because there is reason to believe that it 
was the home of the ancestors of the first President of the 
United States. 

Lawrence Washington, who lived in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, was the Mayor of Northampton, and in 1538 he was 
given the Manor of Sulgrave, by King Henry VIII. 

Sulgrave Manor had been a property of the Catholic 
Church until it was claimed by the Crown, and the Manor 
to-day shows traces of Catholic times. A holy-water re- 
cess is still to be seen in the entrance-hall and two plaster 
heads, supposed to represent monks, have looked down 
for several centuries from the gable of the house. 

What is of most interest to Americans who visit Sul- 
grave Manor is the Washington Coat-of-Arms which, 
though defaced by time, appears above the front door. 
There one sees represented red and white bars, stars and 
an eagle: all emblems that came to be used as symbols 
of freedom in a new country. It was surely more than 
coincidence that the spread eagle and the stars and stripes 
of Liberty should have been foreshadowed in the old shield 
of the Washingtons of Sulgrave Manor! We can only re- 
member the statement made by several historians, that 
"the framers of the constitution got their ideas for the 
national emblem from the crest borne by George Wash- 
ington." 

There is no actual proof that the brothers, John and 

129 



130 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Lawrence Washington, who appeared in America about 
1658, were sons of the family in Northamptonshire. They 
were men of means, for they bought lands and settled at 
Bridges' Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and 
it is very probable that they had come from Sulgrave 
Manor, for it is known that the Washingtons there fell 
upon evil times in the days of Cromwell, and it is more 
than possible that they were forced to take refuge in the 
New World. 

After he had been a short time in Virginia, John Wash- 
ington married Anne Pope, and it was their son, Law- 
rence, who became the grandfather of George Washington. 

Augustine, Lawrence Washington's son, was a gentle- 
man farmer and planter. His first wife died and he mar- 
ried again, his second wife being Mary Ball. By this mar- 
riage there were four sons and two daughters, of whom 
the eldest child was named George. 

George Washington was born at Bridges' Creek, West- 
moreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. The 
house that was his birthplace was burned when the boy 
was three years old and the family moved to another estate, 
in Stafford County. 

The new home was a farmhouse, built like many early 
Virginia houses. It had a large brick chimney, and on 
the ground floor there were four rooms, while the upstairs 
consisted of an attic with a long, low roof. From this 
house the Washingtons could look out upon the Bappa- 
hannock Biver and across it to the little village of Fred- 
ericksburg. 

Very few facts are known about the early years of 
George Washington's life, although many stories were 
made up about them after he became famous. We may 
imagine that he was much like other children, neither bet- 
ter nor worse. He was a thoughtful boy, for he inherited 
his mother's quiet and dignity of nature, and the death of 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 131 

his father, when George was only eleven years old, may 
have helped to make Eim serious. 

Washington learned his first lessons from the sexton of 
the parish, but soon after his father's death he was sent 
back to Bridges' Creek to live with his half-brother, Au- 
gustine, so that he could attend a school kept by a Mr. 
Williams. 

There he studied faithfully and gained what would be 
to-day a good common-school education. He was taught 
no language but his own. His chief study was mathe- 
matics. He was a strong lad, tall and muscular, and a 
leader among his schoolmates; and there is every reason 
to be sure that he was an honest and upright boy; but 
he was certainly not the "goody-goody" fellow that many 
of the stories told about him would lead us to believe. 

Mary Washington was a remarkable woman. She had 
little of what we call education, but her strong common 
sense and loving understanding made her the fit person to 
be entrusted with the upbringing of her talented son. 
Her life was not an easy one, for she had very little 
money, although there were many acres in the Washington 
estates. 

When George was fourteen he felt himself old enough to 
be of some practical help to his mother. He wished to go 
to sea ; for, like many another boy, he felt the call and the 
romance of the unknown. He had watched the tobacco 
ships sailing up the river on their return from far coun- 
tries ; he knew that they brought all the luxuries and many 
of the necessaries of life to Virginia, and it was not un- 
natural that he should desire to sail away in one of those 
dream-bright ships to seek his fortune. 

Mrs. Washington was almost persuaded to let the boy 
go to sea; but a timely letter from her brother in England 
made her withhold her consent and George was sent back 
to Mr. Williams to learn more mathematics and fit himself 



132 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to be a surveyor. For that was almost the only profession 
that a young Virginia gentleman could make money by 
following; and money was needed in the house beside 
the Rappahannock. 

For two years more Washington went on with his 
studies at Bridges' Creek. Some of his note-books, which 
have been preserved, show with what neatness and clear 
understanding he worked. Whatever he did was well 
done. He was as honest at play as at work, and whether 
the business he had in hand was a stiff problem in arith- 
metic, or a holiday fox-hunt, he brought to it his whole 
attention and the best of his ability. 

His half-brother, Lawrence, was fourteen years older 
than George. He had been educated in England and had 
fought at Cartagena under Admiral Vernon. As the 
head of the Washington family, Lawrence had received 
the greater share of the property, and on his return to 
Virginia he chose to live on his estate at Hunting Creek, 
beside the Potomac river. This estate he called Mount 
Vernon in remembrance of the Admiral, and at this pleas- 
ant home young George Washington was often a welcome 
guest. 

At Mount Vernon the boy came under the influence of 
Lord Fairfax, a kinsman of Lawrence Washington's wife. 
Lord Fairfax was an accomplished gentleman who had 
lived in court and camp and was familiar with the great 
world about which George Washington knew nothing. 
He came to Virginia because he had inherited some vast 
possessions beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, and these 
lands needed attention. 

Fairfax was interested in young Washington, for he 
saw that he had ability as well as great strength of char- 
acter. On his side, George was strongly attracted by the 
older man; so a friendship grew up between the two that 
^as of the greatest benefit to the boy. From his associa- 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 133 

tion with the nobleman, George Washington unconsciously 
received an education in the knowledge of men and man- 
ners that added a courtliness to the fearless grace of his 
colonial upbringing. In 1748 Lord Fairfax proved his 
confidence in Washington's ability by entrusting him with 
the task of surveying the Fairfax estates and fixing their 
boundaries. This was a very important commission for a 
boy of sixteen! But, nothing daunted, Washington en- 
tered the little-known country beyond the Blue Ridge 
and quietly and persistently attacked the work. 

Here he had problems to solve more difiicult than any 
that Mr. WilHams had ever given him. He had pathless 
forests to travel, hostile Indians to meet, and new difficul- 
ties to face every day; yet he calmly went about his busi- 
ness, making surveys so accurate that they stand unques- 
tioned to this day. 

It was no easy "Finishing School," this of the wilder- 
ness, but it was the experience needed to mold the eager 
boy into the resourceful man. There is a note of boyish 
satisfaction in the tone of a letter he wrote at this time, 
recounting some of his adventures to a friend, which shows 
that he enjoyed his Wilderness School. 

"Since you received my letter in October last," he wrote, 
"I have not sleep'd above three nights or four in a bed, 
but after walking a good deal all the day, I lay down before 
the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or bear-skin, which- 
ever is to be had, with man, wife, and children, like a 
parcel of dogs and cats ; and happy is he who gets the berth 
nearest the fire ... I have never had my clothes off, but 
lay and sleep in them, except the few nights I have lay'n 
in Frederick Town." 

Such was the training of the man who was soon to be- 
have so fearlessly at Fort Necessity and, a little later, save 
the remnant of Braddock's army from being wiped out. 
But these performances were only skirmishes in the battle 



134 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that was to be fought in the colonies, where this Virginia 
youth — hardened into vigorous manhood — was to play the 
part of general and become one of the greatest statesmen 
that the world has ever seen. 

After his service in the war with France, George Wash- 
ington, having inherited Mount Vernon through his 
brother's death, settled down in that beautiful spot to the 
life of a country gentleman. He was a successful farmer 
and by good management was able to add many acres to 
his estate. 

When he was twenty-seven he married Martha Dand- 
ridge Custis. His wooing was done with the promptness 
and dispatch of a soldier ; for he saw the lady only twice 
before the wedding! The story goes that on a day in May, 
1758, when Washington was on his way to Williamsburg 
with a message from the frontier, he met an acquaintance 
who insisted upon his turning aside to dine at his planta- 
tion. The young Colonel protested; but Virginia hos- 
pitality was not easily evaded. His friend would take no 
denial and said that if a good dinner would not tempt him 
to delay an hour, there was a charming woman to be met 
with at the house who might prove a better argument ; so 
laughingly the young soldier rode to meet his fate. For 
once Washington forgot his errand, to linger by the side 
of the lovely Martha Custis, who was a guest at his friend's 
house. Dinner was soon over and his horse was at the 
door. Back and forth a servant led the impatient mount; 
but still the Colonel could not leave the gracious pres- 
ence of Mrs. Custis. Dusk came and the horse was stabled 
for the night, and the next morning's sun was high in the 
heavens before the abstracted young officer got at last to 
his saddle to spur belated on his way. 

The business attended to in Williamsburg, Washington 
once more sought out the delightful young widow, this 
time at her own home ; and before he left her to return to 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 135 

the work that he was engaged upon at the frontier, she was 
his promised wife. 

On the 6th of January, 1759, he returned to marry her. 
Such a wedding as it was ! The sun shone gloriously that 
day on the glitter of gold that adorned the show of brave 
uniforms in the little church where the ceremony took 
place, for officers of His Majesty's Service crowded there 
in their laced and scarlet coats to see their comrade mar- 
ried. The Governor of Virginia was there too, clad in 
robes befitting his rank; but there was no one present so 
strikingly handsome as the bridegroom, in his blue and 
silver and scarlet. It must have been good to see him 
as he rode beside the coach and six that bore his bride home- 
ward amid the thronging friends of the countryside ! 

A few years of calm happiness followed for Washing- 
ton and his wife before the outbreak of the Revolution 
drew him into the midst of public life. His mother, for 
whom the boy George had been so anxious to make a for- 
tune, shared in his prosperity and content, and life at 
Mount Vernon was a very pleasant thing indeed. 

But when the dark hour of rebellion settled over the land, 
Washington turned calmly from the sweet peace of his 
home life to give himself to his country's need. The 
strength of this strong man knew no regret; he gave the 
best that he had to give at all times and he was utterly 
free from the desire for personal gain or glory. 

One of the most characteristic stories told of him is of 
his attempt to reply to a public vote of thanks made him 
for services rendered to his country. He got upon his feet, 
but he was so unused to talking about himself that he stood 
blushing and stammering until the speaker of the House 
said: "Sit down, Mr. Washington; your modesty equals 
your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language 
I possess." 

Brave, honest, and clean of heart, George Washington 



136 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was as truly the best type of English gentleman as he was 
a fine specimen of American manhood. Circumstance 
made him an American, but to-day all English speaking 
people reverence his memory and rejoice in his nobihty 
of nature. 



CHAPTER XXV 

GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

BEFORE the War of Independence there were 
three forms of government in the thirteen Ameri- 
can colonies: Royal, Charter, and Proprietary. 

The colonies that were or had become Royal, were Vir- 
ginia, New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, 
Georgia, and New Hampshire. In these seven colonies 
the king appointed the governors. 

The Charter colonies were Massachusetts, Rhode Is- 
land, and Connecticut. They were governed by their own 
people in accordance with the permission that had been 
given them under the King's seal. 

Connecticut had only escaped being a Royal colony by 
the quick-wittedness of Captain Wadsworth, who was in 
command of the fort at Hartford in 1687 when Governor 
Andros of New York tried to take their charter away from 
the Connecticut people. The important men of the colony 
were sitting round a table in the Council-room discussing 
the matter with Governor Andros. It was night and the 
room was lighted from a branching candelabra on the table 
where the precious charter lay. Suddenly the lights were 
blown out. There was some confusion, and when the 
candles were relighted the charter had disappeared! Cap- 
tain Wadsworth had taken it from under the very nose of 
the angry Governor and hidden it in the hollow trunk of 
an oak tree — famous afterward as the Charter Oak — and 
so saved the chartered privileges to Connecticut. 

The Proprietary colonies were those that had been 
granted to individuals, as Pennsylvania to William Penn, 

137 



138 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

who ruled as king or overlord in the colony. There were 
only three of these Proprietary colonies: Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, and Delaware. 

Each colony had what is called a legislative, or lawmak- 
ing, body. This was divided into two houses, or parts, 
after the manner of the English Parliament. The Lower 
House, or Assembly, was made up of men who were 
elected by the people. The Upper House, or Council, 
had its members appointed by the King in the Royal 
colonies and by the proprietor in the Proprietarj?^ colonies. 
In the Charter colonies the governors and the members of 
the Council were chosen by the Assembly. 

In the United States to-day the Senate takes the place 
of the Governor's Council of colonial times. But now the 
people elect the governors and both houses of the Legis- 
lature. 

The evil of the old system was that the governors sent 
from England were often unfit for their duties. Some- 
times they were relatives of Court favorites, or men of 
good family who wanted to make an easy living. Too 
often they were ignorant and cruel. Some of them were 
intemperate and vicious, and others were greedy men 
whose only care was to see how quickly they could fill their 
own pockets with gold. 

The oppressions and follies of some of the men sent to 
govern them was a cause of much bitterness to the Ameri- 
can colonists. Was it just, they asked themselves, for the 
mother country to foist these incompetent men upon 
them? And even when the governor happened to be a 
good man, his power was so limited by instructions from 
England that the case of the governed was not much im- 
proved. 

Laws regarding trade between the colonies and other 
countries were made by the British Parliament. No 
foreign ships were allowed to enter a port in America, and 



AMERICA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 139 

the colonists were not permitted to buy any European 
goods except in England. They were forced to send all 
their leading products to English markets ; and laws were 
made to keep people in the colonies from manufacturing 
and selling such things as were made in Britain. Customs 
houses were situated in all the important ports and duties 
were collected for the Crown. 

Many Americans resented these restrictions and did 
their best to evade them. To escape paying heavy duty, 
they landed goods, secretly, in the lonely creeks of Long 
Island, or in the bays of the South. Chests of tea were 
often packed in the middle of barrels of sugar and so 
brought into the colonies from the West Indies instead of 
from England, while bribes were given to the collectors of 
customs for pretending not to know that this smuggling 
was going on. Tobacco was put aboard Dutch ships at 
sea by American vessels, or from little boats that stole out 
— under cover of night — from creeks along the James 
River; for tobacco could be lawfully shipped only to Eng- 
lish ports. This meant that English merchants would buy 
it at the lowest possible price and sell it to other countries 
at a huge profit. Those of the colonists who would not 
stoop to underhand methods of evading the law were none 
the less discontented, for they realized that the mother 
country was acting, not for the welfare of her dependen- 
cies, but with a selfishnes that was inexcusable. England, 
however, thought she was quite within her rights when she 
made the colonists pay for the protection and guidance 
furnished them by the older country. 

Had there been an American Parliament, with power 
to act for Americans under the king, the trouble that was 
fast approaching might have been averted. England's 
great mistake was to try to govern a people and make laws 
for them from across the ocean. We must remember that 
England was much farther away from America a century 



140 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ago than it is now. The map has not changed, but then 
there was no wireless telegraphy to connect the two con- 
tinents ; it took weeks instead of minutes to get word from 
England to her colonies. And how could Englishmen 
fully appreciate the needs of their brothers so many days' 
journey away? It is small wonder that they forgot the 
distant colonists and remembered only the near and very 
tangible profits that could be made off them. 

But in the unhappy minds of the Americans discontent 
was fast shaping itself into resistance of English authority. 
The little cloud of misunderstanding, which at first had 
been *'no larger than a man's hand" was fast growing into 
a storm-center of rebellion. 



I 



CHAPTER XXVI 

CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR 

TO understand the direct causes of the Revolution, 
it is well for us to know something about George 
III, who was King of England from 1760 to 1820. 

He was a man who tried to do his duty; but he had a 
very narrow mind and failed in his kingship because he 
was too obstinate to learn from wiser men than himself. 

His mother, the Princess of Wales, said to him repeat- 
edly when he was a boy, "George, be a king!" and a king 
he meant to be. He intended to rule as by Divine Right 
and he made up his mind that the Parliament should be his 
tool and that he alone would govern England and her 
dependencies. 

From the first he was jealous of Pitt because the great 
statesman was so loved by the people, and as soon as he 
could he made the JNIarquis of Bute, who had been his tutor. 
Prime Minister. 

With the resignation of Pitt, the Parliament entered 
upon a time of dishonor. Seats in the House of Commons 
were bought and sold publicly and in the House itself 
votes were exchanged for money or for titles. It was a 
shameful state of things ; but it suited the King, for he was 
able to put his favorites into office and to keep the control 
of affairs in his own very unwise hands. 

"Oh, to see them meanly cling 

Round the Master, round the King, 

Sported with and sold and bought — = 

PitifuUer sight is not 1" 
141 



142 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The British people at this time had almost no voice in 
the business of the nation ; so the mistakes that were made 
were due to the misguided rule of the King and to the 
stupidity or gi'eed of his advisers. 

To George III and his Parliament the American col- 
onies existed simply for the sake of supplying money to 
England. In the one hundred and fifty years since the 
settlement of Virginia, the population in the thirteen col- 
onies had grown to be nearly three millions ; but English- 
men did not realize how far Americans had progressed. 
European fancy painted the American colonists as half 
savages, while the fact was that there were no better in- 
structed people in the world than the New Englanders, for 
soon after their arrival in the wilds of America had they 
not established their wonderful system of public schools? 
In 1765 there could not be found in all New England one 
person who was unable to read and write ! 

That the English did not look upon their brothers in 
America as their equals had been made clear during the 
wars with the French, when the Government refused fo 
give the officers in the American army as high rank as that 
given to officers who had been trained in England. This 
attitude of the mother country was galling to the colonists, 
for they were as proud Englishmen as ever lived. They 
had come to realize very clearly that the treatment they 
received from England was unjust; so when George III, 
through his ministers, began to pare down their privileges 
they felt that it was necessary for them to rebel. 

Her wars had cost England a great sum of money, and 
Parliament decided that, as they had been fought partly 
to protect English subjects in America, those subjects 
should be made to help to pay off the National debt. 

People in England at this time had a very exaggerated 
idea of the wealth of the Americans. A poem was written 
by a colonial wit which sets forth the picture that the 



CAUSES OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR 143 

British Parliament had in mind when America was men- 
tioned ; 

"There is a pleasant landscape 
That lieth far away 
Beyond the wide Atlantic, 
In North America. 

There is a wealthy people 
Who sojourn in that land; 
There churches all with steeples 
Most delicately stand ; 
There houses like the gilly 
Are painted red and gay ; 
They flourish like the lily 
In North America. 



On turkeys, fowls, and fishes, 

Most frequently they dine; 

With gold and silver dishes 

Their tables always shine. 

They crown their feasts with butter. 

They eat and rise to play ; 

In silks their ladies flutter. 

In North America." 

The rhyme goes on and the reader is supposed to imagine 
that Parliament addresses the King : 

"Let not our suit aff'ront you 
When we address your throne ; 
O King, this wealthy country 
And subjects are your own. 
And you, their rightful sovereign. 
They truly must obey, 
You have a right to govern 
This North America. 



144 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

O King, you've heard the sequel 
Of what we now subscribe: 
Is it not just and equal 
To tax this wealthy tribe? 
The question being asked, 
His Majesty did say, 
*My subjects shall be taxed 
In North America.' " 

It may not have happened quite in this way, but it is 
certain that the House of Commons passed a resolution 
which stated that England had a right to tax the Ameri- 
cans. 

"Other nations tax their colonies," said the King; and an 
Act followed that put a tax on coffee, sugar, and other 
articles. 

This made the Americans very indignant. "We are 
wiUing," they said, "to vote what money the King needs, 
but we will not be taxed unless we are represented in Par- 
liament." And rather than pay the tax required by a 
Government in which they had no voice, they did without 
the articles to which it was affixed. 

In 1765 Parliament passed "The Stamp Act." This 
was a law stating that all bills, legal papers, and notes used 
in the colonies should be wi'itten on stamped paper, which 
was to be prepared in England and sold in America for a 
price that would give a large profit to the British Govern- 
ment. 

The colonists saw that if Parliament could pass an Act 
like this, there would be no end to the different taxes that 
might be imposed upon them. So they firmly refused to 
use the stamped paper. The officers who were supposed to 
sell it were besieged. One man was taken to Boston Com- 
mon and made to sign his resignation before a great crowd 
of angry people ; while the stamped paper was used to build 
bonfires. In some places gallows were erected and the 



CAUSES OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR 145 

men who had been appointed to sell the stamps were told 
that unless they gave up office they would be hanged. 

Delegates from nine of the colonies met in New York, 
in October, 1765, to discuss the Stamp Act. In Philadel- 
phia and Boston great crowds gathered and bells tolled 
mournfully. In the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick 
Henry, a fiery young orator, won over even the most con- 
servative by his eloquent speech in behalf of the colonists. 

These conventions decided that until this unjust tax was 
withdrawn American people should "eat nothing, drinli 
nothing, wear nothing" that came from England. The 
American women got out their spinning-wheels to spin 
their cloth. The eating of mutton was prohibited, so that 
the sheep might be spared for wool; and preparations to 
help the colonists to do without British goods went steadily 
forward. 

English merchants did not enjoy the thought of having 
their trade with the Americans cut off. They began to 
clamor for the Stamp Act to be withdrawn. 

The British Government had been very much surprised 
when the colonists refused to buy the stamped paper ; they 
had never seriously thought that the Americans would dare 
to resist the authority of Parliament. Long debates were 
held about the matter. Pitt attended these debates, al- 
though he was seriously ill at the time. He realized how 
fatal this Stamp Act would be to all friendly relations be- 
tween England and her colonies. He said that the Act 
was unreasonable and unjust and that he was glad the 
Americans had refused to accept it. His wisdom and the 
distress of the merchants triumphed, and the Stamp Act 
was repealed before it had ever been enforced. 

Joy bells rang in London and the ships in the Thames 
displayed all their colors when the good news was an- 
nounced. In America the relief and gratitude of the peo- 
ple was profound; for in their hearts the colonists were 



146 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Englishmen. They loved law and order and they disliked 
the very thought of rebellion; but also they loved their free- 
dom and were jealous for their country's rights. ^lany 
among them had seen that open warfare might have to 
come, and the idea of it was unnatural : so that when they 
found that England had withdi'awn the Stamp Act and 
taken away the immediate cause of complaint, tlieii' re- 
joicing knew no bounds. 

Danger had been only postponed, however: not done 
away with. Pitt's ill health made it necessary for him to 
retire from public life, and with his influence gone, Parlia- 
ment seemed unable to understand that the Americans were 
sincere in their demand for freedom from taxation with- 
out representation. Soon fresh taxes were imposed upon 
the colonists, the most famous of which was three pence a 
pound on tea. 

Once more distrust awoke in the hearts of the American 
people. England, their mother country, had been playing 
with them: she had only seemed to acknowledge her mis- 
take, while all the time she intended to make them bend 
to her will. 

Fresh rioting began. British troops were sent over to 
"keep the peace" ; but they only helped to disturb it. The 
colonists refused to provide food and entertaimnent to the 
soldiers quartered upon them, and in 1770 trouble between 
soldiers and citizens resulted in what is kno\\Ti as "The 
Boston ^lassacre," three of the people being killed by the 
soldiers. These deaths aroused deep feeling in the col- 
onies and gave a more serious turn to the relations between 
England and America. 

Parliament, somewhat alarmed by the attitude of the col- 
onists, took the tax ofl:' of nearly ever}i:hing but tea, and 
it was not for the money that this tax remained, but to show 
that England still claimed authority to impose taxes when 
she pleased. As a matter of fact, the Goverimient ar- 



CAUSES OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR 147 

ranged that the Americans, after paying the tax, would 
have their tea cheaper than before. But with the colonists 
it had come to be a matter not of price, but of principle. 
They sternly refused to acknowledge England's power to 
tax them and they refused to receive the tea. They drank 
in its place, tea made from sassafras-roots, sage, and other 
American plants. 

Ship-loads of tea arrived from England at different 
American ports, only to be sent home again. In Charles- 
ton, the tea was landed, but stored in damp cellars where 
it was allowed to rot and waste. 

A town-meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and 
the following resolution was agreed to: "That whosoever 
shall directly or indirectly aid or abet in unloading, receiv- 
ing, or vending the tea sent by the East India Company 
while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is 
an enemy to America." 

When the tea ships arrived in Boston an attempt was 
made to return them quietly to England, but the captains 
were obstinate and would not leave the harbor. After 
earnest discussion as to the best way of making it clear to 
Parliament that they did not intend to accept taxed tea, 
fifty men dressed themselves like Mohawk Indians and 
with hatchets in their hands boarded the ships and broke 
open and emptied three hundred and forty-two chests of 
tea into the sea. 

The tea destroyed in this way was valued at £18,000 
(about $90,000) and Parliament declared that until it was 
paid for, the port of Boston should be closed. The char- 
ter was also taken from the rebellious cit5^ This meant 
that business in Boston was ruined. But in America there 
was strong sympathy with what the Bostonians had done, 
and help was not wanting for them. A union of the col- 
onies was quickly brought about; and, strengthened and 
encouraged by one another, they were ready to demand 



148 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

their rights from England or else defy her rule. After 
the "Boston Tea Party" there was only one thing possible 
and that was war. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

SOME FAMOUS AMERICANS OF THE REVOLUTION 

ON a day in the year 1723 a dusty, tired boy walked 
into Philadelphia. He was only seventeen and he 
had traveled more than three hundred miles to 
reach the pleasant Quaker city. As he went along, stop- 
ping now and then to admire the spacious dignity of the 
houses that lined the shady streets, he munched a roll that 
he took out of one of his bulging pockets, where it had kept 
company with a medley of clean socks, bits of string, an 
arithmetic primer and some sugary raisins. Under his 
arm he carried the rest of his possessions tied up in a gay 
cotton handkerchief. This boy's name was Benjamin 
Franklin and he was destined to become one of America's 
greatest sons. 

Franklin's forefathers had lived in Northamptonshire, 
in England, where for generations they had been respect- 
able blacksmiths, owning their bit of land and living decent, 
thrifty lives. They were a Protestant family, and when it 
became impossible for Protestants to worship openly in 
England, one of the Franklins emigrated to America. He 
went with his wife to Boston, where he found freedom for 
his religious views and was able to earn a living by making 
soap and candles. His son, Benjamin, was born in Bos- 
ton and lived there until he set off to Philadelphia "to seek 
his fortune." 

Benjamin was said to be very much like one of his North- 
amptonshire uncles whom he had never seen. This uncle 
had a genius for inventing things and was a brilliant man 

149 



150 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in many ways. He taught himself law and rose to a 
prominent position in his county. *'If Franklin says he 
knows how to do anything," his fellow-townsmen said, "it 
will be done" — a statement that came often to be made 
in America about Benjamin Franklin. 

The boy had only two years of school life before he was 
taken into his father's business. He was not happy selling 
soap and candles, and his father, afraid that he might run 
away to sea, wisely decided that Benjamin should choose 
a profession for himself. He took the boy about in Bos- 
ton, from one place of business to another, that he might 
j udge which trade he would like best to follow. In accord- 
ance with his own wish, Benjamin was apprenticed to a 
printer. He learned about printing and engraving and 
began his own education by reading books that passed 
through his hands. 

He taught himself arithmetic, geometry, and navigation, 
and many a time went without his dinner to buy a book 
on philosophy or science. When his apprenticeship was 
finished he went to Philadelphia to set up in business for 
himself. There he became a stationer and master-printer ; 
but, not afraid of honest work, he trundled a wheelbarrow 
through the streets with the paper bought for the purposes 
of his trade. 

Franklin was always looking for ways to help other 
people, and because he was more wide-awake than most 
men, he saw more chances of being useful. 

Knowing how much books meant to him, he made it his 
business to start a book-club in Philadelphia. Out of this 
small beginning has grown the great system of Lending- 
Libraries that we enjoy to-day. 

It was Franklin who saw that a fire-brigade was neces- 
sary in Philadelphia and it was he who organized it. He 
it was who designed the form of street lamp which has long 
been in use where "Anglo-Saxons burn gas or once burned 



SOME FAMOUS AMERICANS 151 

oil." He invented an open stove for sitting-rooms which 
he refused to patent because he said he had profited so much 
from the discoveries of others that he was glad to repay his 
debt, and, he added, *'to repay it in a shape so peculiarly 
acceptable to my country-women." 

But the thing for which we owe Franklin the most grati- 
tude is his discovery of the relation between hghtning and 
electricity. He believed them to be one and the same 
thing, but he did not know how to prove it. At last he 
made a kite and fitted it suitably for an experiment that 
he meant to undertake. Telling no one except his son 
what he was doing, he waited until there was a thunder- 
storm; then he stole out and sent his kite up among the 
stormy clouds. At first nothing happened, then suddenly 
the inventor felt a welcome shock and knew that he had 
proved his theory. But how little he guessed of the won- 
derful inventions for which he had paved the way! Yet 
without Franklin's first steps in the science of electricity, 
there could have been no Marconi's wireless telegraphy to- 
day; it was the American's kite string that *'put a girdle 
round about the earth." 

Dilring the colonial wars with France, Benjamin Frank- 
lin took his share of responsibility. It was he who got to- 
gether the necessary horses and wagons for Braddock's ill- 
fated expedition ; and later as a colonel of militia, he proved 
himself to be a capable soldier. 

When Parliament imposed the Stamp Act on the people 
of the colonies, it was Franklin who was sent to England 
to defend the rights of the Americans, and it was largely 
due to his influence that the Act was repealed. 

At one time Franklin was postmaster-general for the 
colonies ; and during the Revolution he was tireless in ser- 
vice to his country. Wherever good counsel and wise 
judgment were needed, there Benjamin Franklin was to 
be found. He helped to prepare the Declaration of Inde- 



152 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pendence ; and a newspaper that he pubhshed did much to 
encourage patriotism and to inspire Americans with faith 
in themselves. 

In 1776 Frankhn was sent as American Minister Pleni- 
potentiary to France, where he was treated with great 
honor. He succeeded in making a treaty with the French 
which was to be very important to the American cause in 
the Revolutionary War. When a peace was agreed upon 
between Great Britain and America, Franklin assisted in 
making out the treaty. He also took part in framing the 
Constitution of the United States. 

Seldom has one man gained distinction of so many kinds ; 
he was certainly the first American to win world-wide and 
everlasting fame. Benjamin Frankhn's father used to 
tell his boy that "a man diligent in his calling should stand 
before kings " 

"I did not think," Franklin said, "that I should ever ht- 
erally stand before kings, which however has since hap- 
pened ; for I have stood before five, and even had the honor 
of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner." 

Of this great American it has been said that "he wrested 
the thunder from the sky and the scepter from tyrants." 

The words inscribed on Franklin's tomb were composed 
by him and because they contain a very pretty idea and help 
to show the modesty of the man, they are worth remember- 
ing. He does not call himself a great statesman, or an 
inventor, but simply a printer : 

The Body of 

Ben. Franklin, Printer, 

Like the cover of an old Book, 

(Its contents worn out, 

And stripped of its lettering and gilding) 

Lies here food for the worms. 

Yet the work shall not be lost ; 

For it shall, as he believes, appear once more 



SOME FAMOUS AMERICANS 153 

In a new 

And most beautiful edition, 

Corrected and revised by the Author. 

Another man whose influence was important in America 
during the eighteenth century, was born on Cape Cod in 
1725. This was James Otis, who was graduated at Har- 
vard at the age of eighteen, and practiced law first at 
Plymouth and later at Boston. Having to do with marine 
law, Otis could understand how the British controlled the 
trade of Americans ; and their injustice and abuse of power 
fired the young lawyer to eloquent speech. 

He took up the cause of liberty with great ardor, and 
started the cry that "taxation without representation is 
wrong." It was Otis who became the leader in the debates 
against the Stamp Act ; debates that roused the people of 
the colonies to a consciousness of their right to resist 
injustice. 

Samuel Adams was another Harvard graduate to op- 
pose taxation by Parliament. It was Adams who was the 
leader in Boston at the time the taxed tea was dumped into 
the harbor, and it was he who was chiefly responsible for 
that act, the consequences of which were so far-reaching. 

A third lawyer, whose name still resounds throughout 
the centuries, was born in Virginia in 1736. This was Pat- 
rick Henry. The son of a poor school-teacher, he received 
what general education he had from his father. He read 
law, and soon after he began to practise, he took a warm 
interest in public questions. Elected to the Legislature of 
Virginia, he became famous as an orator. He made sev- 
eral stirring speeches against the Stamp Act; and later, 
when pleading for the organization of Virginia militia, 
early in 1775, he voiced the spirit of earnestness that in- 
spired the American people in his famous speech when he 
said: 



154 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at 
the price of chains or slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty God ! 
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, 
give me liberty or give me death." 

With such men as this to enter the lists against oppres- 
sion, and with George Washington to lead them, the out- 
come of the Revolution was predestined before the fighting 
was begun. It seems strange that the British did not bet- 
ter gage the determination of the Americans. If King 
George and his Parliament had stopped to remember from 
whom the rebellious colonists had inherited their stern love 
of justice, they might have treated them more as equals 
and less as naughty children and so averted the dreadful 
war that was to end so disastrously for England. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE FIRST SHOTS AEE FIRED 

GENERAL GAGE, who had fought under Brad- 
dock, was supposed to understand American af- 
fairs, and his opinion of the unrest in the colonies 
was taken for fact in England. When he told the King 
and Parliament that only a show of force was needed to 
quiet the unruly spirit of the colonists, he was believed. 

"The Americans will be lions while we are lambs," he 
declared ; and the British Government, thinking to frighten 
the rebellious subjects into submission, sent Gage to Bos- 
ton with four regiments of soldiers. But instead of fright- 
ening the Americans this step only served to strengthen 
them in their resolve to defend their rights. 

In 1774 a very important Congress met in a quaint, low- 
roofed room of Carpenter's Hall, in Philadelphia. Dele- 
gates from twelve of the thirteen colonies were there and 
among tbem were the most famous men of the day. Their 
business was to discuss the trouble that threatened peace. 
After careful deliberation, they sent an address to the 
King, begging him to reconsider his attitude toward his 
subjects in America and stating the unwillingness of these 
subjects to submit to oppression. The address made clear, 
however, that a peaceful settlement of the difficulty was 
what the American people wanted. 

The King paid no attention to this appeal. The House 
of Lords and the House of Commons refused even to let it 
be read in their hearing; although so good a judge of states- 
manship as Pitt declared that no state papers had ever been 
issued that could surpass that of the Philadelphia Congress 

155 



156 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"for solidit}^ of reasoning . . . and wisdom of conclusion 
under such a complication of difficult circumstances." 

Before the Congress broke up a dinner was given to its 
members by the Pennsjdvania Assembly. It was held in 
the old City Tavern and the most popular toast of the even- 
ing was "May the sword of the parent never be stained with 
the blood of her children!" "Even the Quakers who were 
present drained their glasses," says a noted historian, "on 
the ground that it was not a toast, but a prayer." The 
Quakers, you remember, avoided all wines ; but the hope of 
peace was dearer to their hearts than their usual scruples. 

The Americans did not want war, but they meant to be 
ready for it if it had to come. Thej'' formed themselves 
into military companies. The men of New England neg- 
lected the usual business of life while they learned to drill ; 
every village green became a parade ground where some 
veteran of the French or Indian wars instructed youths 
and men in the arts of marching and handling arms. Most 
of the men owned muskets and knew how to use them, but 
now those v/ho had none received them and were carefully 
taught good m.arksmanship. 

In England the King continued deaf to reason. "I am 
clear," he said, "that there must always be one tax to keep 
up the right, and as such I approve the Tea Duty." He 
further announced his intention of subduing his refractory 
subjects in America, and his short-sighted Parliament 
promised him support. 

General Gage had now been some time in Boston with- 
out frightening the Americans or interfering particularly 
with their plans, but he judged the time was ripe for him 
to exercise some authority. He heard that the rebellious 
people had some military stores at Concord, twenty miles 
from Boston, and these he determined to destroy. 

It was late on the night of April 18th, 1775, when eight 
hundred soldiers, commanded by Colonel Smith and Major 





■N.^i-. l)iSI'Er<SE, YOU kl•.l;hl,^; IIIF^OW DOWX ^'olk ARMS AND ASPERSE!' 



THE FIRST SHOTS ARE FIRED 157 

Pitcairn, crept out of Boston on their way to seize the 
"rebel stores" in the King's name. Crossing the Charles 
River in boats they commenced a quick march toward Con- 
cord, hoping to reach it while the colonists were still asleep ; 
but they could not surprise the ever-watchful Americans. 
Paul Revere, an engraver by trade and a devoted patriot, 
had been warned by a light limig in the belfry of the North 
Church in Boston that the British were coming, so before 
they had landed in Cambridge he was on horseback and 
away 

"... to spread the alarm through every middlesex, 
village and farm. 

— through the niglit rode Paul Revere, 

So through the night went his cry of alarm, 

A cry of defiance and not of fear, 

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 

And a word that shall echo forevermore." 

The colonists had formed themselves into companies and 
were called "]Minute-men" because they were ready to be 
called out on a minute's notice to protect their rights. 
When the British reached Lexington, six miles below Con- 
cord, they found between sixty and seventy minute-men of 
the to^^Ti waiting on the common to receive them. 

Ma j or Pitcaii-n galloped forward and called out : "Dis- 
perse, disperse, you rebels! Throw down your arms and 
disperse I" But the sturdy fellows did not obey. "Fire!" 
Pitcairn ordered his men. And they responded with the 
first shots of the Revolutionary War, fired there on the 
Lexington conmion on April 19, 1775. Eight of the 
minute-men fell dead, and the rest, seeing how hopelessh^ 
outnumbered they were, withdi-ew and so left the British 
free to press on to Concord. 

When they arrived they could not find much to destroy, 



158 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

as there had been time to hide most of the stores ; but they 
conscientiously spoiled some flour, burned some wooden 
spoons and trenchers, and cut down a liberty pole. AMiile 
they were doing this, news of the men killed at Lexington 
was spreading rapidly over the country, and stern-faced, 
determined colonists were flocking from farms and villages 
to avenge their death. 

By noon, when the troops started to return to Boston 
the country was swarming with patriots, each man armed 
with a musket and strong in his resolution. There was no 
organized attack, yet from every side the British had to 
endure a raking fire; their road led them through woods 
where it seemed as if a musket spoke from behind every 
tree. In the open it was not much better ; for the Ameri- 
cans moved on with the troops, and from the shelter of 
fences or rocks fired constantly and with deadly aim at 
the British soldiers. At Lexington the regulars were re- 
inforced by Lord Percy and nine hundred men; so after 
a two hours' rest they pressed on again toward Boston ; but 
the aroused Americans still pursued them, like a cloud of 
hornets, spattering a ceaseless fii'e upon the army from all 
sides. 

In the evening the British reached Bunker Hill, just 
out of Boston. There they remained the night, for they 
were safe for a time, protected by the guns of the Somerset 
man-of-war that lay in the harbor, and the next morn- 
ing they entered the city. 

In the battle of Lexington, as all that long day's en- 
counter was called, fifty Americans were killed and thirty- 
four wounded; while the British loss was sixty-five killed, 
one hundred and eighty wounded and twenty-eight taken 
prisoners. To the credit of the colonists it is said that they 
behaved with great kindness to the wounded prisoners, even 
sending word to General Gage that he might have the sur- 
geons of his own army look after them. 



THE FIRST SHOTS ARE FIRED 159 

The news of fighting was carried in hot haste all over 
New England and into the middle and southern colonies. 
Far and near the excited people soon understood that war 
so long threatened had at last begun. Men left their 
plows standing in the fields and hurried toward Boston, 
ready and eager to fight for liberty. 

On the day after the battle the Congress of Massachu- 
setts met to arrange for the upkeep of an army. The num- 
ber of men needed was determined and the ways and means 
for payment of the troops was decided upon. Rules and 
regulations for the soldiers were made out and everything 
was done with businesslike dispatch and order. 

Within an incredibly short time a great encampment of 
patriotic Americans was di-awn up in such a way as to 
blockade Boston, where General Gage and his army were 
stationed. To be sure, the Americans were undisciplined 
and without uniform ; but they had enough enthusiasm to 
cover these defects, and their burning thirst for justice 
stood them in place of experience. 

"A rabble with calico frocks and fowling-pieces," the 
English called them; yet Gage feared them enough to be 
willing to stay in Boston without protest until help could 
come from over the sea. 

The most pressing need of the Americans was not men 
to fight, but materials with which to fight. At the out- 
break of the war they had been able to collect only a very 
small supply of ammunition. Soon after the battle of 
Lexington about two hundred and forty backwoodsmen 
set out to capture Fort Ticonderoga and such war materials 
as might be housed there. These men were led by Ethan 
Allen and were called the "Green Mountain Boys." 
Eighty of them crossed Lake Champlain and reached the 
fort just as day was dawning. The sentry on duty was 
much surprised to see such a body of men and snapped 
his gun at them ; but the colonists rushed forward, seized the 



160 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

man and entered the fort while the garrison was still 
asleep. They formed themselves into a hollow square on 
the parade ground and gave three loud huzzas to rouse 
the sleepers. 

When the commanding oiRcer appeared and asked in 
a bewildered voice what was happening, he was answered 
by Allen, who bade him surrender the fort. 

"In whose name do you make such a demand?" asked 
the astonished commander. 

"In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental 
Congress." 

A skirmish with cutlasses and bayonets followed, but the 
commander, seeing that he stood no chance against the in- 
vaders, soon surrendered. Thus did the Americans gain 
the important fort that had been won with such heavy cost 
from the French, besides getting possession of one hundred 
and twenty cannons, a good supply of powder, some bar- 
rels of flour and pork, as well as other necessaries. 

The neighboring fort of Crown Point also was taken 
before the British realized that war had actually begun. 

Some gunpowder was manufactured in the colonies, and 
a Virginia lead mine furnished material for bullets for a 
time; but most of the war materials used in the Revolu- 
tionary War were either captured from the British or 
bought from the French. 

To get the bullets that were used in the first regular en- 
counter with British troops, the Americans had to melt 
down the organ pipes of a Cambridge church. "Fifteen 
balls apiece" were all that could be allowed to each man, 
but the martial music played by those bullets still echoes 
down the years in the story of the battle of Bunker Hill. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL 

FOR some weeks General Gage and his army re- 
mained bottled up in Boston. The city was built 
upon a peninsula and, at the time of the Revolu- 
tion, was connected to the mainland by a neck of sand over 
which the tide sometimes flowed. This the English were 
able to defend, but at the landward end the Americans had 
built fortifications which served as a very effective stop- 
per to keep the British in Boston and at the same time 
made it difficult for them to attack the colonists. 

Ever-increasing numbers of patriots poured into the 
blockading camp; and so great was their faith in their 
cause that they were not dismayed when English ships of 
war sailed proudly into Boston Bay. These ships brought 
fresh forces to relieve Gage; troops under the conmiand 
of the best generals in the King's service — Howe, Bur- 
goyne, and Clinton. 

Now at last Gage felt himself strong enough to fight; 
but first he offered pardon to all Americans who would lay 
down their arms, except Samuel Adams and John Han- 
cock, who he said were responsible for inciting the people 
to rebellion. The Americans, however, were wanting 
liberty, not pardon for demanding it, and Gage decided 
that he must give them a drubbing. But it happened that 
the choice of place and the time for battle were not left for 
him to arrange. 

Charlestown, like Boston, was built upon a peninsula 
and on it were two hills that have since been considerably 
lowered. These heights were known as Bunker Hill and 

161 



162 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Breed's Hill and were within easy gun-shot of Boston. 
Gage saw that it would be wise to get them under his con- 
trol and planned to occupy them on the night of June 
18th. But the Americans were as quick as he to realize 
the importance of these hills and they determined to seize 
and fortify one of them. 

The evening of June 16th saw a great stir on Cambridge 
conmion, for twelve hundred colonists were mustered there 
for special duty. Colonel Prescott was given the com- 
mand of the soldiers. He had fought in the wars with the 
French and was a man of great coolness and resource. 
With him was brave old Israel Putnam, a Connecticut 
farmer and veteran of many an Indian war. Prayers 
were said by the President of Harvard College and then 
the men marched away in the direction of Charlesto^vn. 
Few of them had been told that they were expected to 
capture a hill well in range of the English guns ; but they 
all knew that they set out to fight and perhaps to die. 

The colonial soldiers took with them wagons laden with 
spades and picks, but only a very scant supply of food. 
As the road they followed took them in front of the Eng- 
lish ships, they marched with hushed voices and noiseless 
tread. Bunker Hill had been suggested as the best place 
to fortify; but Prescott understood that his orders were 
to take Breed's Hill; so he marched on there, although it 
was much nearer Boston and infinitely more dangerous to 
reach than Bunker Hill. 

The night was warm and still. There was no moon, 
but the stars w^ere unusually bright. Across the river, 
Boston and her garrison were asleep and in the Bay the 
British ships lay, a grim menace of war; but they too 
slept. 

WTien the top of the hiU was reached an engineer 
marked out the lines for a redoubt and as the bells of 
Boston struck twelve the patriots fell to work. ]Most of 



THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL 163 

them were accustomed to handling pickax and spade, so 
they worked with swiftness and skill, although they used 
caution lest the clang of iron against a stone should rouse 
the enemy. While officers and men dug and piled the 
earth into a low wall there floated up to them, from time 
to time, the singsong call of the British sentinel: "All is 
well!" 

When morning came in all its summer glory, General 
Gasfe rubbed his eves in amazement to see a strong en- 
trenchment and hundreds of armed men where the evening 
before there had been only a field of gently waving grass. 
The battleships woke to some purpose and their guns be- 
gan to hurl shot and shell at the Americans who swarmed 
the hill-top like a colony of busy ants. 

The unaccustomed boom of the big guns might have 
worked havoc among the raw troops, for the earth-shaking 
noises was enough to frighten better seasoned soldiers ; but 
Colonel Prescott's calmness gave confidence to his men. 
He deliberately exposed himself to the fire, walking fear- 
lessly on the top of the mud parapet while he talked to 
and encouraged the workers. 

Gage, peering through his glasses, saw the tall figure 
of the American leader and turning to a bystander, who 
chanced to be Prescott's brother-in-law, he asked: 

"Will he fight?" 

"Yes, sir," was the answer; "to the last drop of his 
blood!" 

General Gage was annoyed, but he foresaw no great 
difficulty in dislodging the Americans from their position 
on the hill-top. He never dreamed that they could seri- 
ously oppose the regular troops. 

At noon Generals Howe and Pigot crossed over from 
Boston with two thousand soldiers to drive away the col- 
onists and capture their works. After reconnoitering, 
General Howe sent back the barges for more men, and 



164. STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

was not satisfied until the British force numbered twenty- 
five hundred. 

In spite of the disturbing fire from the warships, the 
Americans had labored at their entrenchments until they 
had a breastwork reaching from the redoubt to the bot- 
tom of the hill. It was a fragile barrier, for it was built 
partly of new mown hay and wooden fences, but at least 
it helped to inspire the patriots with confidence. 

The British soldiers were a brave sicjht in their Sflowino" 
uniforms and with their bavonets flashino' in the sun. 
The tired, disheveled men on Breed's Hill looked do-vvn 
upon them with quickening pulse : but the colonial soldiers 
were not cowards. They waited calmly for the attack, 
although most of them had never before tasted battle. 
Prescott sent back to Cambridge for help; but the ma- 
chinery of the American army was too new to move 
quickly. Little help came; so the brunt of the battle of 
Bunker Hill, as it was inacciu-ately called, was borne by 
the men who were worn by the toil of many hours. 

The day was hot, there was no water on the hill-top, 
and the Americans, suffering from thirst and hunger, had 
to see the British soldiers eating and drinking. Howe 
had seen that to reach the rebels meant a march uphill 
through high, thick grass, and before begimimg the climb, 
he halted his troops for refreshment. Jugs of cool drink 
passed along the ranks, and the laughter and talk of the 
trained soldiers floated up to the white-faced volunteers 
above, who tried not to think of theii' hunger and their 
parched throats. 

At last an order was given by the British generals and 
the soldiers rose and moved up the hill with the precision 
of clockwork. 

When they were yet a long way from the top they 
opened a harmless fire of musketry; but it was not re- 
turned by the colonists, who, having no powder to waste, 



THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL 165 

withheld their fire until the enemy was near enough for 
tlie officers to be disthiguished from the men. Then all 
the muskets of the Americans spoke at once. The colo- 
nists could shoot straight and each man had taken careful 
aim, so that few of their bullets were wasted. 

The nimiber of British to go down before that first 
volley was enormous. The regulars turned in confusion ; 
but a remorseless fire followed them down the hill. Again 
they advanced, only to be turned a second time with ter- 
rible loss. Then, at the foot of the hill, the British laid 
do^vll their knapsacks and stripped off their heavy coats. 
An alarming number of officers had fallen, but where no 
officer was left, the oldest private soldier took command. 
A third time the British charged up the hill where now 
the trampled grass was slippery with blood. 

There were brave men on both sides that day! 

Crowded on to the house-tops of Boston, breathless 
throngs watched the progress of the battle. Charlestown 
had caught fire and the wooden houses going up to the sky 
in smoke and flame made a background of awful grandeur 
for the scene. General Gage, as he gazed through his 
glasses, changed his opinion of the Americans, so that he 
wrote later to the Secretary of State in England: "The 
rebels are shown not to be the disorderly rabble too many 
have supposed." 

How the battle would have ended if the Americans had 
not run short of ammunition it is impossible to tell. As 
it was, the third attack of the British could not be repulsed. 
The little store of powder and the few bullets were ex- 
hausted. The colonists had neither bayonets nor the skill 
to use them. The British swarmed over the low wall of 
the redoubt and drove the Americans back with practised 
thrusts of steel. The colonists fought with the butts of 
their guns and with stones; but they were driven out and 
forced to retreat down the hill and across the Xeck to 



166 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Cambridge, the English ships raking them with shot as 
they went. 

The Americans were beaten and driven from the field, 
but theirs was a glorious defeat. When Washington 
heard of it he exclaimed, "Thank God the liberties of the 
country are safe!" And that was the feeling of every 
patriot, because it was proved that it was possible for un- 
trained Americans to fight the best troops of England. 
With training and the proper facilities of war, victory was 
certain. 

King George, however, was not convinced of this un- 
welcome truth. Eleven hundred Enghsh and nearly five 
hundi-ed Americans lay dead after the battle of Bunker 
Hill; but there must be great suffering, more bloodshed, 
and the iVinerican colonies must pass out of his reach for- 
ever, before the pride-blind monarch would believe that his 
will could be defied. 

After the battle, the British held and fortified Breed's 
Hill; but the Americans kept their old position, so that 
Gage and his army were still closely besieged in Boston. 

In September of this same year a colonial army invaded 
Canada in the hope of persuading the French there to join 
in the rebellion against Great Britain; but although the 
French disliked their British rulers they cared less for 
their American neighbors, and, refusing to be mixed up 
in the war, they drove out the colonists with little sym- 
pathy or ceremony. This failure to enlist the help of 
Canada was not onlj^ a great disappointment to the 
Americans, but it cost them the lives of several able lead- 
ers who fell in an attempt to take Quebec. 



CHAPTER XXX 

GENERAL WASHINGTON TAKES COMMAND OF THE ARMY 

ON May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Con- 
gress met at Philadelphia. The time had come 
for the Americans to have a recognized govern- 
ing body of their own, since they had revolted against the 
King and his authority. The place of supreme power was 
therefore taken over by the Congress and the duties of a 
sovereign were performed by its members, who were, at 
first, representatives of only twelve colonies, but soon hesi- 
tating Georgia sent in her delegates and so the thirteen 
colonies were finally united. 

The first work that the Congress had to do was formally 
to organize the Revolution. Better arrangements for the 
army were necessary and a Commander-in-Chief had to 
be elected. 

The choice fell upon George Washington, who had been 
sent from Virginia as a delegate to the Congress. His 
wise and courageous behavior during the French and In- 
dian wars had made him a hero in the eyes of his country- 
men and there were many who believed with Patrick 
Henry that for "solid information and sound judgment" 
Washington was the greatest man in the colonies. 

In accepting the position of Commander of the "Con- 
tinental Army," Washington refused all pay except his 
expenses. He undertook his new duties without any wish 
for personal fame or glory, sacrificing his love of quiet and 
happiness to his country's need. He wrote sadly to his 
brother at this time : "I am now to bid adieu to you and 
to every kind of domestic ease, for a while. I am em- 

167 



168 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

barked on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect, and in 
which perhaps no safe harbor is to be found." 

When Washington took command at Cambridge, he 
found fourteen thousand men enhsted ; but they could not 
be called soldiers, for they were, as their new general said, 
"a mixed multitude of people under very little discipline, 
order or government." They all knew how to use their 
muskets, but the supply of powder was so low that there 
were only nine rounds for each man, and no use could be 
made of the artillery. 

After he had determined the exact state of his own 
army, Washington went up on to a hill-top from which 
he could see the enemy. For a long time he looked down 
upon the splendid British troops and saw that it would be 
easy for them to break through the American lines and put 
to rout the feeble patriot forces. He wondered greatly at 
the inaction of the British, but decided that "Providence 
watched over the liberties of the American people" and 
gladly used the time of waiting to get his army into shape. 

The fact was that the British were commanded by an 
incompetent man. General Gage had had one taste of 
fighting with the Americans and it had not been to his 
liking. With ten thousand men at his command, all per- 
fect in discipline, he preferred sitting still in Boston to 
striking a blow at the rebels. 

In his task of reorganizing the army, General Wash- 
ington met with discouragements that would have over- 
whelmed a less determined man. A soldier's life proved 
to be harder than the men of the colonies had expected it to 
be. Most of them had enhsted for only three months and 
when their time was up hundreds of them went back to 
their farms and families, finding that the love of home was 
stronger than the love of country. Washington insisted 
on a strict discipline, so unpleasing to the hot-tempered 
men of New England that many of them refused to serve 



WASHINGTON TAKES COMMAND 169 

under him. Gradually a new army grew out of the old, 
which was much smaller than the other, but gave promise 
of greater usefulness. 

All through the winter Washington and his officers were 
busy drilling their troops and teaching them the meaning 
of the word soldier. 

That winter brought hardships to the British army, for 
in Boston there was little food and health suffered. 
Smallpox broke out and what with much illness and scant 
fuel the soldiers grew discouraged and unhappy. A 
British captain wrote home that he had tasted fresh meat 
only twice since his arrival in Boston. Even the invalids 
had nothing to eat but salt pork and peas; and General 
Gage himself was no better off. In a rhyme wi'itten at 
that time he is supposed to have exclaimed : 

"Three weeks — ye gods ! nay, three long years it seems 
Since roast meat I have touched except in dreams." 

Their long inaction made the soldiers sullen, and the 
knowledge that their failure to subdue the rebel colonists 
had disappointed England made them hard to manage. 
Gage was finally recalled by an angry government and 
General Howe took over his command and with it his pol- 
icy of doing nothing. 

It was the Americans who broke the long spell of wait- 
ing. In February supplies of arms and ammunition 
reached Washington, and he was reinforced by ten regi- 
ments of militia. This made it possible for him to attempt 
the occupation of Dorchester Heights, so near Boston that 
the position once gained would give the Americans com- 
mand of the city. 

On the night of March 4th, 1776, a strong working 
party made its way to the Heights, while a heavy fire of 
artillery was kept up to divert the attention of the English. 
The colonists took with them a train of three hundred 



170 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

wagons laden with bales of hay to be used in the building 
of fortifications, for a hard frost bound the earth and made 
digging impracticable. 

All through the dark hours of night the Americans 
worked, and by dawn two forts were completed which 
looked much stronger and more formidable than they 
really were. A kindly fog made the walls of hay appear 
so massive and impenetrable that a British officer declared 
that the Americans must possess an Aladdin's lamp and 
have genii at their command, since in no other way could 
the miracle of their work be accounted for. General 
Howe himself exclaimed: 

*'The rebels have done more work in one night than my 
whole army would have done in a month !" 

But, sick and sorry though they were, the British meant 
to fight before they yielded up Boston. To get at the 
enemy it was necessary for them to cross a stretch of water. 
They began to embark ; but a furious east wind scattered 
their boats and delayed the attack. All the next day the 
storm raged and the English were forced to wait in idle- 
ness. The Americans, meanwhile, were strengthening 
and enlarging their fortifications and making ready rows 
of barrels filled with earth, which were intended to be 
rolled downhill against the British troops when the time 
of battle came. 

On the third day the storm had spent itself; but Gen- 
eral Howe thought that the position of the colonists was 
now too strong for him to stand any chance of holding out 
against them. An attack that could mean only failure 
would not help the British cause; so it was decided that 
they should leave Boston as soon as possible. Two weeks 
later the royal troops and their followers sailed away from 
the town they had held so long and Washington entered 
the city in triumph. Boston was never again to be un- 
der the rule of an English king. 



WASHINGTON TAKES COMMAND 171 

The British went to Nova Scotia and Washington soon 
withdrew his forces to New York, where it seemed hkely 
the next attack would fall. 

In his poem, On the American War, Robert Bums 
wrote: 

"Poor Tammy Gage within a cage 
Was kept at Boston Ha', man ; 
Till Willie Howe took o'er the knowe 

For Philadelphia, man ; 
Wi' sword an' gun he thought a sin 

Guid Christian blood to draw, man ; 
But at New York, wi' knife an' fork, 
Sir-loin he hacked sma', man." 

So you see we are not done with General Howe, but will 
hear of him again before the end of the Revolution. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE AMERICANS DECLARE THEIR INDEPENDENCE 

THAT America could sever her relations with the 
mother country was an idea of slow growth. 
Even after months of fighting the mass of the 
colonists hated the thought of being cut off from England. 
It was not independence that they wanted at first; it was 
simple justice. 

An Act of Parliament could have ended the war in its 
early stages ; but it was long before the people realized that 
no compromise could ever be made with Great Britain. 

As time went on, however, and the dignified appeals of 
Congress to the King for protection against the unfair 
laws of Parliament were answered by proclamations 
against traitors and rebels, the Americans came to see that 
if thej^ were to have justice they must be free from the 
rule of George III. 

The matter was discussed everywhere. It seemed a 
dreadful and treasonable thing to denounce a king, 
even though he "was marked by every act which can define 
a tyrant," and the colonists held back from the necessitj^ of 
"that horrid measure" as long as possible. The peace- 
loving Quakers were especially anxious to keep the rela- 
tions with Great Britain unchanged. But pamphlets and 
articles urging the wisdom of breaking away from Eng- 
land were widely circulated, and a booklet called Common 
Sense, written by Thomas Paine, had great influence in 
convincing all classes of people that the welfare of the 
colonies rested on their freedom from a dependence that 

had become bondage. 

172 



DECLARE THEIR INDEPENDENCE 173 

One after another the colonies began to plan for inde- 
pendence; and on the fourth of July, 1776, the Continen- 
tal Congress adopted the "Declaration of Independence." 

This Declaration, which is one of the most famous state 
papers in the world, was written by Thomas Jefferson. 
He was a Virginian, and he it was who took Washington's 
place in Congress when the General went to take command 
of the army. The Declaration of Independence is worded 
with remarkable clearness and force. It begins with a 
declaration to the world of the causes that decided the 
colonists to separate themselves from the English; then 
follows this statement: 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men 
are created equal: That they are endowed by thair Cre- 
ator with certain unalienable rights; that amongst these 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." An ac- 
count follows of the many acts of injustice from which the 
colonies suffered under George III ; the Declaration then 
continues: "We, therefore, the representatives of the 
United States of America in general Congress assembled, 
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rec- 
titude of our intentions, in the name and by the authority 
of the good people of these united colonies, solemnly pub- 
lish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States; that they are 
absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that 
all political connection between them and the state of 
Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and 
that, as free and independent States, they have full power 
to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish 
commerce, and do all other acts and things which inde- 
pendent States may of right do." 

The paper closes with this solemn sentence : "And for 
the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on 
the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge 



174 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred 
honor." 

The Declaration of Independence was at once pub- 
lished, although it was not formally signed by the mem- 
bers of Congress until some weeks later; and the fourth 
of July has been kept ever since 1776 as America's great 
Independence Day because that was the day on which the 
United States first discovered itself to the world as an 
independent and self-reliant power. 

The Declaration was received with joy by the people 
who, now that they had made up their minds to be inde- 
pendent, felt free to give scope to their hatred of the 
tyranny that had been practised upon them. Bonfires 
lighted the city streets, pictures of George III were 
burned, and a great leaden statue of the King, whose 
health so recently had been drunk at all public festivals, 
was pulled down from its pedestal in Bowling Green, New 
York City, and made into bullets to be used against the 
royal troops. 

All thinking men saw that the war must now go on 
until the people of the newly united States should prove 
their right to keep the freedom they so proudly claimed, 
or until they should shamefully lose it. The time for a 
diplomatic settlement of the difficulties between Great 
Britain and the American colonies was gone forever. 

Washington, who was with the army in New York, 
said in an address to his troops: "The General hopes and 
trusts that every officer and soldier will endeavor so to live 
and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dear- 
est rights and liberties of his country." Thus did he re- 
mind Americans that their Declaration of Independence 
brought with it grave duties and new responsibilities. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

THE WAE GOES ON 

THE British were not seriously alarmed by the 
Declaration of Independence, but they were care- 
ful to make what provision seemed necessary for 
crushing the revolutionary Americans. A strong fleet 
and a large army were got together. Because the major- 
ity of Englishmen were unwilling to fight foes of their own 
blood, Parliament was obliged to bargain with some Ger- 
man princes for troops to help to carry on the American 
war. 

These foreigners, who were called Hessians because 
most of them came from a part of Germany known as 
Hesse-Cassel, looked very smart and fine when they first 
appeared in New York with Lord Howe and his well 
equipped British soldiers; but they had no real interest in 
the war and the English were to pay a heavy penalty, in 
the end, for trusting to alien troops. 

It was in July, 1776, that Lord Howe reached New 
York, where he joined his brother. General Howe. Their 
combined forces made an army of 30,000 men, nearly twice 
as many soldiers as Washington had at his command. 

Lord Howe had been instructed by George III to make 
peace with the Americans, if possible, so he told them that 
if they would lay down their arms they should have the 
King's pardon. The proposal was inflaming to a people 
who had determined to be free. They asked for no par- 
don. Justice had been their demand and now freedom 
was what they intended to fight for with all their might. 

175 



176 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The odds seemed all in favor of the English when it 
should come to fighting, for the American army was suf- 
fering from every kind of discomfort. Three thousand of 
the men were ill, in consequence of having to sleep with- 
out shelter and because their food was of the worst. 
There were no hospitals where they could be cared for and 
not even medicines for their relief. 

But in spite of all difficulties, Washington prepared an 
armed reception for the British on Long Island. He did 
not hope to hold out long against the enemy, but he in- 
tended that every advantage they gained should cost them 
dearly. 

Strangely dauntless in the face of what looked like 
certain defeat, the uncouth colonial soldiers rallied 
round their Commander-in-Chief. From New England 
sounded a note of high courage and faith in the cause that 
made the Revolution something of a holy war. 

"Play the man for God and the cities of our God: may 
the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel be your 
leader," cried Trumbull of Connecticut; and hearing the 
trumpet words farmers left their harvests half gathered, 
their fields half mowed, and marched away to join Wash- 
ington in New York. It was the brave American women 
who brought in the harvest that year ; for the mothers, the 
daughters, and the wives of the colonies took up the work 
of their men. 

On the 27th of August, 1776, the battle of Long 
Island was fought near Brooklyn. After making a heroic 
stand the Americans were defeated. Lord Howe had a 
chance of completely destroying the Colonial army. But 
he hesitated to attack the Americans at too close quarters, 
remembering, perhaps, the blood shed at the battle of 
Bunker Hill. He decided to wear out the strength of the 
little army by a prolonged siege ; but he reckoned without 
Washington. 



)' 



THE WAR GOES ON 177 

The American general had no intention of awaiting sure 
destruction. Under cover of night and a dense mist he 
withdrew what was left of his troops from Brooklyn and, 
taking them safely across the river, landed them in New 
York before the British even discovered that they were 
gone. 

When New York had in turn to be abandoned, panic 
seized the Americans. Many of them, distraught by their 
first awful taste of war, made blindly for home. Whole 
regiments deserted; and, not content with taking them- 
selves away, many of the deserters took food from the 
army stores, while others made off with precious ammuni- 
tion. If they were beaten their idea seemed to be to save 
what they could. Sir George Trevelyan tells us, "One of 
the fugitives was detected in possession of a cannon-ball, 
which he intended for a present to his mother for the pur- 
pose of pounding mustard!" 

Washington was sick at heart. "Ai-e these the men 
whom I expect to defend the liberties of America?" he 
asked ; but he would not give up his faith in their true na- 
ture. A stern figure, he rode among the disordered 
troops, encouraging and calming them and by his serene 
presence inspiring them to fresh endeavor. As soon as it 
was possible he ordered a retreat to Harlem, which was 
then a village nine miles above New York. 

The British were in close pursuit and a company of 
Americans, led by Israel Putnam, would certainly have 
been overtaken had it not been for the courageous cun- 
ning of a lady named Mary Lindley, who, when the British 
army was near her house, sent out and invited Howe and 
his officers to lunch with her. The gallant Englishmen 
accepted the invitation and spent two hours in her com- 
pany, soothed by her wit and gracious charm and by the 
perfection of her wines and viands. This halt enabled the 
fugitives to reach Harlem Heights, where, overcome with 



178 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fatigue and strain, they lay clown to sleep, with no shelter 
between them and a i)ouriiig rain. 

When morning came and English ships were seen sail- 
ing up the Hudson, Washington knew that he must cross 
over the river to New Jersey. This he did; and the 
British, following, stormed Fort Washington on the way 
and took three thousand prisoners. Step by step the 
Americans were driven back. So close were pursuer and 
pursued that the men in the rear of Washington's army, 
sto])ping to fire a bridge would be in sight of the British 
workmen on the way to rebuild it I 

Kight across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania the 
retreat led. The half-starved, barefooted soldiers in their 
tattered clothing, struck fear to the hearts of their country 
j)eople, who had small faith in such a scarecrow army. 
When the news reached Philadelphia that Washington 
had withdrawn from New Jersey and crossed the Dela- 
ware, there was great alarm. Congress, then in session, 
adjourned to Baltimore and many of the inliabitants of 
the city tied in terror. 

Early in November Howe, tired of following Washing- 
ton's despised forces, put the British army into winter 
quarters in New Jersey. lie himself went to New York 
to enjoy the comparative comfort and gaiety of the city. 

Time hung wearily on the hands of the Hessians. They 
indulged in vicious drinking bouts and cruel jests at the 
expense of the colonists. The misery caused by their 
plundering and foraging helped to turn the fear of the 
Americans into grun anger. The insulting behavior of 
these German troops did more to rouse the people from 
their stupor of fright than all the proclamations of Con- 
gress had done. Men saw that if they were to protect 
their property and their families they must support the 
Colonial army and make it strong enough to keep the in- 
vaders back. 



THE WAR GOES ON 170 

About this time Conp^ress extended the term of enlist- 
ment for soldiers. They were now enrolled to serve 
throughout the war. Encouraged by the hope of having, 
at last, a dependable army in place of a lot of three-months 
servers, Washington decided to take a bold step. 

The village of I'renton, an impoi-laut post about thirty 
miles from Philadelphia, was occupied by a large force 
of Hessians. And on Christmas evening Washington 
crossed the Delaware with twenty-four thousand men and 
marched toward Trenton. 

"On Christmas day in scvcnty-six 
Our ragged troops, witli bayonets fixed, 

For Trenton marched away, 
The Delaware see ! The boats below ! 
The light obscured by hail and snow ! 

But no signs of dismay." 

It was a terrible march. The night was very dark and a 
bitterly cold wind was blowing. Two men died of cold 
on the road and all the thinly clad, ill-nourished soldiers 
suffered agony. Many of them were barefooted, and 
their torn, frozen feet left blood stains on the snow. But 
they pressed on and at eight o'clock in the morning sur- 
prised tlie bewildered Hessians. 

The Hessian soldiers were in poor condition for fight- 
ing; they had been drinking heavily the day before and 
were still in a state of half intoxication. Their commander 
was killed as he tried to lead them to meet the attack ; and 
after a battle that lasted only three-quarters of an hour, 
the Hessians surrendered and the colonists were able to 
retreat with a thousand prisoners and a number of cannon. 

As soon as news of the defeat reached New York, Corn- 
wallis was sent out to avenge the British disaster. He 
marched with a strong force and on the 1st of January, 
1777, attacked the Americans near Trenton. 



180 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

It was easy for the powerful British troops to drive back 
the httle Continental army. Night came down while the 
chase was going on; so CornwalHs waited for daylight to 
strike the blow that he believed would wipe out the main 
army of the Revolution and put an end to the war. 

But Washington had no intention of being caught in 
this trap. Great danger always found him ready with a 
plan. He threw up entrenchments as though for defense 
in the morrow's battle, and at midnight built high his 
camp-fires, and then quietly slipped away. His army 
marched round Cornwallis, got in his rear and attacked 
the troops left in Princeton, a few miles awa5^ Before 
Cornwallis could interfere, Washington had won another 
victory, captured many prisoners and a large quantity of 
stores. 

This second success compelled the British to withdraw 
from most of New Jersey; and it put new heart into the 
American cause. 

Great pride was felt in the Commander-in-Chief, who 
had won victory out of such seemingly hopeless circum- 
stances. The people gratefully determined to support 
their splendid leader, and Congress expressed the appre- 
ciation of the country by granting Washington absolute 
military authority for six months' time. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777 

EXCEPT for the battle of Princeton, the year 1777 
began with unimportant successes for both Great 
Britain and America. The British won some 
petty victories on the Hudson, while the Americans made 
a successful attack on an outpost of Long Island, where 
they destroyed stores and took ninety prisoners. But 
these skirmishes were only the introduction to the real cam- 
paign of that year. 

The British had a well-thought-out plan of action which, 
had it not miscarried, might have ended the war in the 
King's favor. Their army was to be divided. One part, 
led by Howe, was to capture Philadelphia; while another 
division, under the leadership of General Burgoj'^ne, was 
to march down from Canada, along the line of Lake Cham- 
plain and the Hudson River, in such a way as to cut off 
New England from the rest of the United States. 

Fortunately for the Americans, General Howe was slow 
in beginning his part of the program, and while he loitered, 
Washington was using every moment to strengthen his 
little arm5^ When in June Howe finally moved toward 
Philadelphia, he found the American commander-in-chief 
with eight thousand men blocking his path. The rebel 
troops were more formidable than they had ever been be- 
fore; under Washington's control they had come to re- 
semble a regular army ; and the British general hesitated, 
for he had no wish to attack the Americans so early in the 
campaign. After careful consideration he withdrew his 

181 



182 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

troops to New York and there embarked them, so that 
they eoiild make the journey to Phihidelphia by sea. 

They landed late in August at the head of Chesapeake 
Bay; only to find that Washington and his army were 
there before them. 

The Americans took up a position beside the Brandy- 
wine River where tliey could shield Philadelphia from the 
British. Their force, however, was much smaller than 
that of their opponent and they stood little chance of vic- 
tory in the encounter that immediately took place. But 
they fought bravely until driven from the field by the 
overpowering numbers of the enemy. 

Howe, delighted with having routed the Americans, en- 
camped at Germantown while Cornwallis was dispatched 
with a detachment of the army to occupy Philadelphia. 

In the Quaker city there were many people who, in spite 
of all things, were loj^al to the King and who welcomed his 
troops with joy. Most of the patriots fled from the city 
in dismay; so Cornwallis met with no difficulty in cap- 
turing it. 

Benjamin Franklin observed, with that shrewd wit of 
his, that it was not the British that had taken Philadelphia ; 
it was Philadelphia that had taken the British! 

On the 4th of October Washington led a surprise at- 
tack against the troops at Germantown. A fog of the 
kind that had on several occasions befriended the Ameri- 
cans, helped them at fu'st; but as the smoke of battle dark- 
ened the air the fog increased until it became so dense that 
it was impossible to tell friend from foe. Great confusion 
reigned and a panic of uncertainty seized both armies. 
Afraid of killing their own men the Americans beat a 
hasty retreat. 

Later Howe made a feeble assault against the Ameri- 
can troops, but it came to nothing and the British general 



.THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777 183 

thought best to go into camp for the winter. Accordingly 
he settled down comfortably behind his entrenchments. 

For his troops Washington sought winter quarters at 
Valley Forge, a wooded ravine about twenty miles from 
Philadelphia. But his army was to have none of the com- 
forts enjoyed by the King's troops. The American sol- 
diers were exhausted and discouraged. It took all the 
courage and resource of their Commander to keep heart 
in the starving, miserable men. 

Congress looked to this army to vindicate the freedom 
of the United States ; yet its members made almost no pro- 
vision for the welfare of the soldiers. The governing ma- 
chinery was new and worked clumsily; so the army 
suffered. 

News traveled slowly in 1777 and Congress may not 
have realized the destitution of the army, for letters fol- 
lowed Washington to Valley Forge remonstrating with 
him for going into winter quarters when he might have 
been employed in attacking the enemy. His reply was 
justly bitter. After stating the miserable situation of the 
soldiers he said that he could assure the gentlemen of Con- 
gress that "it is a much easier and less distressing thing to 
draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fire- 
side, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill and sleep under frost 
and snow without clothes or blankets." 

The experience that Washington had gained when a 
young man in the forests of Virginia helped him to lessen 
the sufferings of his men. He taught them how to build 
huts and thatch them with boughs; he did much for their 
comfort; but he could neither clothe them nor give them 
boots, and it was with a heavy heart that he saw the poor 
fellows forced to sit up all night, huddled round the fires, 
for fear of freezing if they should lie down to sleep. 

Officers mounted guard dressed in old rugs or woolen 



184 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

bed quilts and kept what remained of their uniforms for 
the time when they would have to meet the enemy. 
Months after the worst of suffering of that dreadful win- 
ter was over, "a party of aides-de-camp gave a supper at 
which no one who possessed a whole suit was admitted ; and 
the room was crowded with distinguished guests!" 

For days at a time there would be no meat for either 
officers or men. They kept life in their bodies by eating 
porridge made of flour paste, or a lump of dough baked 
in the embers. This diet was varied by "soaked wheat and 
sugar" or soup thickened with bread. The making of 
soup without stock was taken as a grim joke by the soldiers. 
There is a story told of a well-meaning officer who asked 
a group of men what they were cooking in their kettle. 
"A stone. Colonel," was the answer; "they say there is 
some strength in stones if you can get it out." 

The horses were worse fed even than their masters, and 
died by hundreds every week. 

That winter was the darkest period of the war for the 
Revolutionary Army, but it brought to light the courage 
and endurance of both officers and men and welded them 
together in sympathy and purpose through their mutual 
suffering. 

Washington lodged at the house of the old Quaker iron- 
master in Valley Forge. He told that one day he was 
walking by the creek when he came upon the General's 
horse tethered to a tree. Looking about he saw the Com- 
mander-in-Chief kneeling at prayer in a thicket by the 
roadside, with the tears running down his cheeks. "I 
felt," the old Quaker told his wife, "that I was upon holy 
ground. If there is any one on earth that the Lord will 
listen to it is George Washington." 

In February, before the worst period of misery was over, 
Mrs. Washington joined her husband in the stone house 
at Valley Forge, for she was never kept from his side by 



THE CAMPAIGN OF 177T 185 

any thought of personal comfort. "During the whole of 
every week day," it is said that "her little sitting-room was 
filled with the wives of officers patching garments, knitting 
socks, and cutting out shirts for the soldiers ; and she her- 
self, in intervals of her needle-work, was continually to be 
seen entering the regimental huts with a basket on her arm, 
to comfort the sick with wholesome food prepared by her 
own hands." 

As an ideal soldier's wife, Martha Washington's ex- 
ample was invaluable to her country-women. At the be- 
ginning of the war some ladies paid JMrs. Washington a 
visit of ceremony ; for even then she was recognized to be 
"The First Lady in the Land." The callers wore their 
"best bibs and bands and most elegant silks and ruffles" 
and so were surprised to see the mistress of Mount Vernon 
dressed "in a plain brown dress and a check apron." She 
received her guests very graciously, but when the greetings 
were over she took up her knitting. From that day on- 
ward "no hands were idle; fine clothes disappeared from 
use; sewing and knitting clubs were organized for the 
benefit of the army, and the meal bags were always open, 
and the soup simmering on the fire." 

While Plowe's section of the British arm}'' was gaining 
the doubtful successes of Brandy wine and Germantown, 
General Burgoyne was faring badly in the north. He had 
begun his march in June with a force of 6,700 British and 
Germans, 250 Canadians and about 400 Indians. 

Burgoyne was a splendid general. Lender ordinary 
conditions he would have given England cause to be proud 
of him, but his way led through a country where every 
man's hand was against him. He had to deal with a peo- 
ple he did not understand and whose methods of fighting 
were new to him. The character of the country made his 
progress slow and difficult. At one stage of the advance 
it took the British fifty days to march seventy miles, so 



186 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dense was the wilderness through which they had to pass 
and so many the rivers that had to be bridged. This delay 
gave the American farmers time to arm and march against 
the enemy. 

The use of Indians by the British was a mistake that 
the Americans were quick to resent, for although Bur- 
goyne used every effort to tame the savage spirit of the 
Red Men it often broke out in acts of barbarity. 

At one time two Indians were sent to guide a beautiful 
lady. Miss Macrea, to the British camp, where she was 
to be married to an officer. On the way the guides quar- 
reled about the reward they expected to receive for their 
services and one Indian, determined to cheat his rival of 
any reward at all, struck the lady dead with a blow from 
his tomahawk. This incident roused great excitement 
throughout the country and brought discredit upon the 
British army. 

At Ticonderoga Burgojne succeeded in capturing the 
fort, which was held by General St. Clair; he even cap- 
tured the stores and artillery which St. Clair tried to move. 
He gained control of Lake Champlain and Lake George 
and at length reached Fort Edward on the Hudson River; 
but there success left him. 

Everywhere the Americans were rising to protect their 
homes from the awful savagery of Burgojme's Indian al- 
lies, who were drunk with the taste of war and quite be- 
yond the control of the British general. Friends of Great 
Britain as well as her enemies poured forth from the woods, 
mountains, and marches, which in this part were thickly 
sown with plantations and dotted with villages, to fight 
the man who had brought this danger upon them. 

Burgoyne expected help and cooperation from Sir 
Henry Clinton, who had been left with a considerable force 
in New York. Instructions for him to send help to the 
army in the north had been dispatched ; but, the story goes, 



THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777 187 

the order from England reached New York too late to be 
of much use, because Lord Germain, to whom the papers 
were entrusted, put them in a pigeon-hole while he went to 
a garden-party and then forgot them! 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE SURRENDER AT SARATOGA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 

WASHINGTON generously sent some of his 
troops to strengthen the men who had ralhed 
to crush Burgoyne's enterprise. He did this 
regardless of the fact that by so doing he weakened his own 
chance of success against Howe. 

General Gates was appointed to command this section 
of the American army, which, with its numerous volun- 
teers, amounted to thirteen thousand men. Gates was a 
kindly man but no great general, and the successes that he 
gained were due rather to the enthusiasm of his soldiers 
and the ability of some of his officers than to his own per- 
sonal skill. 

To the names of Arnold, Morgan, and Stark stands the 
credit of Burgoyne's surrender, because detachments led 
by those officers carried on a series of attacks all along his 
line of advance and succeeded in demoralizing the British 
troops and putting the Canadian and Indian allies to 
flight. 

But in spite of severe losses Burgoyne pushed on past 
the Hudson, hoping every day that the promised help from 
New York would be sent to his rescue. 

On the afternoon of September 19th the British were 
advancing through a forest. They had just entered a 
clearing, known as Freeman's Farm, when they were sur- 
prised by a furious onslaught of Americans led by General 
Arnold. 

Before Burgoyne could recover from his bewilderment 

188 



THE SURRENDER AT SARATOGA 189 

his attackers had retired to join their main army, which 
Gates had drawn across the road at Bemis Heights. This 
was a position of great natural advantage, as it was pro- 
tected by the hills on one side and by the river on the other. 
The British advance was effectively cut off and all that 
Burgoyne could do was to entrench his men and wait. 

On the seventh 6f October a fierce battle took place. 
The Americans fought their way to the very center of the 
British line. That night Burgoyne with his army re- 
treated to Saratoga; but he found on reaching the river 
that the Americans were stationed on the other side. 
Again he turned ; but the American line in his rear spread 
out and closed up until the British were surrounded. 

Burgoj^ne had only about eight days' rations for his 
men and he was entirely cut off from reserve supplies. 
He held a consultation with his officers and decided to 
make terms and surrender. 

General Gates at first demanded that the entire British 
force ground arms and become prisoners of war ; but Bur- 
goyne and his men determined to starve where they were 
rather than to submit to such indignity ; so after some dis- 
cussion Gates agreed to grant them the honors of war. 

On October 17th a convention was signed and the Ameri- 
cans marched into the British lines, their bands playing 
Yankee Doodle, while the British marched out and at a 
given word from their own officers piled their arms on the 
river-bank. 

The Americans were generous enough to turn away 
their heads so that they might not witness the humiliation 
of a brave enemy. "All were mute," we are told, "in as- 
tonishment and pity." As soon as the ceremony of sur- 
render was over the Americans hastened to serve bread to 
the British soldiers while Gates entertained the chief of- 
ficers of the royal armj'- at a banquet. To be sure, the 
table was made of bare planks laid across empty barrels. 



190 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and only four plates and two drinking glasses could be 
found by the host for the use of himself and Burgoyne. 
There was, however, plenty of roast and boiled meat to eat, 
although there was nothing to di-ink but rum and water. 
Upon Burgoyne's being asked to propose a toast, he filled 
his glass to "General Washington!" and Gates, to equal 
his guest in courtesy, proposed a toast to "The King!" 

News of the surrender at Saratoga was greeted in Eng- 
land with great consternation; while in France it turned 
the tide of public opinion in American favor. 

Before this time the war of the colonists against England 
had excited sympathy in Europe; already many foreign 
officers had volunteered to help the Americans in their bat- 
tle for independence. Some of them were pure adventur- 
ers, but others were men of ability and true lovers of free- 
dom. Count Pulaski, Baron de Kalb, and Baron von 
Steuben were all good officers. But the best known for- 
eign officer and the one who rendered the most important 
service to the Americans was the young Marquis de 
Lafayette. 

A member of an old French family, Lafayette was born 
the 6th of September, 1757. He was only nineteen when 
he set out from his own country to throw in his lot with 
the Americans. He left a young wife in France, gave up 
all that great wealth and social position offered him, for 
the ideal of freedom and justice. Loading a ship with 
materials of war, he sailed to America and offered his 
services as a volunteer. 

Lafayette was made a major-general, and although so 
young, he soon had won the approval of Congress and the 
friendship of Washington. The British scorned him and 
called him "the little boy" ; but on more than one occasion 
they found him a dangerous check to their plans, and re- 
spect for him grew with his years. 

Lafayette was always a keen supporter of liberty. He 



THE SURRENDER AT SARATOGA 191 

took part in the French Revolution, but not in the mad 
extremes of that time. He was for years a prisoner in 
Austria, in spite of American efforts to free him. Bona- 
parte's influence finally gained him freedom in 1797. 

Wlien Lafayette revisited the United States in 1824, 
he was welcomed with honor by those whose fathers he had 
helped in their days of struggle. He made a triumphant 
tour of the country, rejoicing in its prosperity and he was 
given by Congress a grant of $200,000 and a township of 
land as a mark of esteem and to repay him for his losses 
and expenses during the Revolution. 

But to return to 1777. When the news of Burgoyne's 
surrender reached France, the French people were yet 
smarting from the bitterness of their loss of Canada and 
they hailed the American success with joy, for it gave them 
an excuse to vex England. On February 5, 1878, a treaty 
was signed wherein France formally acknowledged "The 
Independent United States of America." This was the 
same thing as a declaration of war against England. 
Spain soon followed the French example, and Holland 
took a like course; so that as a direct outcome of Bur- 
goyne's surrender at Saratoga, the one-time British colo- 
nies stood forth a united and recognized power at war with 
the mother country and backed by strong allies. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 

WHILE most persons were dreaming of a fu- 
ture when America should be independent of 
England, there was one man, named John 
Paul Jones, who was dreaming to some purpose. He un- 
derstood both the British and the American point of view 
and saw that it was too late for a peaceful Act of Parlia- 
ment to settle matters. He realized that as the Americans 
were not content to be entirely subject to the British 
Crown, they must separate themselves completely from 
England. 

John Paul Jones was born in the Lowlands of Scot- 
land. His father, John Paul, was a hard-working gar- 
dener with a large family to support. It was not always 
easy to make both ends meet in the Paul cottage ; so when 
a distant relative of the family, who was at home from Vir- 
ginia on a visit, offered to adopt the oldest boy, William, 
the poor father gladly consented. Thus it happened that 
little John's brother sailed away to America, where he took 
the name of his kinsman and was known as William Paul 
Jones. 

When John was twelve years old he was sent to sea as 
a master's apprentice. His first voyage took him to the 
American colonies, and as the ship anchored in the Rap- 
pahannock River, near the landing-place of the Jones es- 
tates, he was allowed to go ashore and visit his brother. 
William was by that time a man of thirty, managing the 
business of the plantation for his adopted father. The 

192 



THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 193 

old planter took a great liking to John and wished to 
adopt him also; but the boy preferred to follow the life 
of the sea, and when his visit was over he sailed away to 
the West Indies. 

John Paul was a born sailer. He advanced so rapidly 
in seafaring skill that before many years he was the captain 
of a merchant-ship. Trade often took him to America, 
where he came to know such men as Washington, Frank- 
lin, and Adams, who delighted in his society ; for Captain 
Paul was a scholar as well as a sailor. He had taught him- 
self French and Spanish and had studied the naval history 
of his time until he was as well educated as any regular 
officer in the British service. 

When Jones, the old Virginia planter, died, he left a 
will by the terms of which John Paul was to inherit the 
plantation in the case of William's death, on the condition 
that he add Jones to his name. Thirteen years later 
William died and John Paul Jones gave up the roving 
sailor's hfe to live on his beautiful estate in Virginia. 

He was beloved by his slaves, several of whom he set 
free. He kept as hospitable a home as any of his neigh- 
bors in a colony famous for its hospitality ; but his interest 
was not in the plantation. The management of his affairs 
he gradually left to a faithful Scottish overseer, while he 
studied, or made leisurely trips in his sloop from one town 
to another to enjoy the company of his many friends. 

The war cloud was thickening and Paul Jones was 
deeply in sympathy with the Americans. Love of free- 
dom was as natural to him as his love of the sea ; and the 
first shots had scarcely been fired at Lexington when he 
began to make plans for an American navy. At once he 
wrote to several of the colonial leaders, offering his serv- 
ices. "Call upon me," he said, "in any capacity which 
your knowledge of my seafaring experience and your opin- 
ion of my qualifications may dictate." 



194. STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

But at first the Americans had no thought of carrying 
on hostihties at sea. The fame of the British navy was 
so much respected in the colonies that the idea of striving 
against England's sea power was looked upon as madness ; 
but as the Revolution progressed it became necessary to 
provide ships of war. 

Fortunately the early settlers in America had been a 
seafaring people. Their most important towns were situ- 
ated on the Atlantic coast or on inland waters having direct 
communication with the ocean; and this meant that the 
colonists could manage small craft and take up the tiller 
and oar as naturally as they could handle the scythe and 
spade. 

You remember that ships were built in Massachusetts 
very early in the history of New England. For many 
years little trading vessels had been sent up and down the 
coast, armed with guns to guard against the treachery of 
the Indians. Later, as we learned from the story of Cap- 
tain Kidd, all ships that put to sea had to be ready to de- 
fend themselves against pirates; so the sailors had had 
some practical experience in sea fighting, although no ships 
of war were constructed. 

In October, 1775, when General Washington was in 
sore need of supplies for the army, he issued commissions 
to several vessels to cruise in and about Massachusetts Bay 
in order to intercept British store ships. A great deal of 
powder, some small arms and a few cannons were captured 
in this way. But it was not until after the burning of the 
town of Falmouth by a British sea captain that Congress 
felt the necessity of organizing a navy. 

Thirteen cruisers were then ordered to be got ready and 
Congress, remembering Paul Jones' offer of help, sent to 
him for advice. His sound judgment and practical knowl- 
edge proved of great service. 



THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 195 

Private subscriptions helped to pay for the building of 
the ships, which varied in force from ten to thirty-two guns. 
Every American was interested in the project; and in 
Philadelphia there were many patriots, gentlemen of lei- 
sure, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, who reported at the 
shipyards, eager to help to build the first vessels of the 
American navy. 

Wlien the thirteen ships were ready there was difficulty 
in deciding who was to command them. Since Paul Jones 
had done so much in planning and designing the cruisers, 
it was the wish of some of the members of Congress that 
he be put in command of the fleet; but Jones was from 
Virginia and delegates from other colonies thought it un- 
fair that Virginia should furnish the head of the navy as 
well as the commander-in-chief of the army. The feeling 
of jealousy was so strong against him that Jones was not 
even given the rank of captain, but was enrolled as a first 
lieutenant. The captains were chosen from different sea- 
board colonies and the command of the fleet was given to 
Commodore Hopkins, who was described as "a brave and 
gallant seaman." 

It happened, however, that Paul Jones was the first man 
to receive his commission and in the absence of the captain 
of the Alfred he was put in temporary command of that 
ship and ordered by Congress "to break her pennant," the 
naval phrase meaning to put a man-of-war in commission. 
Obeying the order, he flung out to the wind the first 
American flag ever shown on a regular man-of-war. This 
was not the stars and stripes, but a flag carrying the em- 
blem of a rattlesnake and the motto, "Don't tread on me !" 
It was not a beautiful flag and Jones had no liking for it. 
"I was always at a loss to know by what queer fancy or 
by whose notion that device was first adopted," he wrote 
in one of his journals. "For my own part I could never 



196 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

see how or why a venomous serpent could be the com- 
batant emblem of a brave and honest folk fighting to be 
free." 

The first cruise of the American fleet proved disastrous. 
Poor Commodore Hopkins' glory was short-lived, for he 
was relieved of his command for allowing the Glasgow, a 
British ship, to escape him after she had sailed through 
his fleet and engaged three of his vessels in action. 

Of the captains enrolled in that first Navy List, only 
one has left a particularly worthy name behind. That was 
Nicholas Biddle, of Pennsylvania. But his brave life 
ended almost before his career had begun, by the blowing 
up of his little frigate, the Randolph, in his attempt to take 
the British ship Yarmouth, of exactly twice his force. 

In 1776 Congress announced that all American cruisers, 
both public and private, were authorized to capture any 
vessel, armed or unarmed, that sailed under the British 
flag. In reply to this announcement many ships put to 
sea. They were manned by fishermen, merchants, and all 
classes of men, who were anxious to profit by the fortunes 
of war, and were armed with any sort of cannon they 
could get. These privateers hastened to the highway of 
Britain's ship trade and their successes were of great value 
to the American cause. 

At one time ten thousand suits of winter uniform on the 
way to Biu*goyne's army were taken at sea and sent to 
clothe the destitute American soldiers. But during the 
first two years the Americans won no outstanding victory. 

In 1777 Paul Jones was given command of the ship 
Ranger; and with his promotion there began a new chap- 
ter in naval history. 

At the same time that Congress gave Paul Jones his 
appointment, this resolution was passed: 

"Resolved: That the flag of the thirteen United States 



THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 197 

of America be thirteen stripes alternate red and white: 
That the Union be thirteen stars in a blue field, repre- 
senting a new constellation." 

Captain Jones loved the new flag, which was so mucK 
more appropriate than the old rattlesnake emblem. 
"That flag and I are twins," he said; "born the same hour 
from the same womb of destiny. We cannot be parted in 
life or death. So long as we can float we shall float to- 
gether. If we must sink we shall go down as one!" 

Flying the beautiful new flag, Captain Jones went to 
France that same year to take the news of Burgoyne's 
surrender; and it was during this visit in French waters 
that the naval Commander at Brest fired the first salute 
ever given by a foreign nation to the American flag. 

The many adventures that brave Captain Jones met 
with would need a book to themselves ; they are like stories 
from the Arabian Nights. He was one of the best seamen 
and the most unconquerable fighters that ever sailed the 
ocean. Not content with attacking English ships at sea, 
he carried the defiance of the American people into British 
waters, and his name soon came to be a terror on both sea 
and land. 

In April of 1778 Paul Jones engaged in the first naval 
battle fought under the stars and stripes when he con- 
quered the English ship Drake off Carrickfergus in Ire- 
land. His ship was inferior in force to the British man- 
of-war and the account of how he beguiled the Drake away 
from harbor and then took her in fair fight is exciting 
reading. 

In September of that year, in the Bon Homme Richard, 
Paul Jones met with the English ship Sera'pis, and when 
he saw that there was no other hope of victory, he ran 
alongside the enemy and lashed the two vessels together. 
After a fierce battle that lasted two hours the British sur- 



198 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rendered, but the Bon Homme Richard was so badly cut to 
pieces that Captain Jones had to transfer his crew to the 
Serapis and leave his own ship to sink. 

Here is an old ballad that describes the brave daring of 
Captain Jones during his cruise in the Irish Channel. It 
has about it such a salt smack of the sea that if he ever 
heard it himself, the gallant Captain must have approved 
of it: 

THE YANKEE MAN-OF-WAR 

'Tis of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars, 
And the whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through the 

pitch-pine spars ; 
With the starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the 

gale, 
On an autumn night we raised the light on the head of old Kinsale. 

It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and 

strong, 
As gaily over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled along ; 
With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she spread, 
And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat-head. 

There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked the poop, 
And under the press of her pond'ring jib, the boom bent like a 

hoop! 
And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her stout 

main-tack, 
But he only laughed as he glanced aloft at a white and silv'ry 

track. 

The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that float from shore to 

shore. 
And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone to 

Dunmore, 
And that sterling light in Tusker Rock where the old bell tolls 

each hour, 



THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN NAVY 199 

And the beacon light that shone so bright was quenched on Water- 
ford Tower. 

The nightly robes our good ship wore were her three topsails set 
Her spanker and her standing jib — the courses being fast; 
*'Now lay aloft, my heroes bold ! Let not a moment pass !" 
And royals and top-gallant sails were quickly on each mast. 

What looms upon our starboard bow,? Wliat hangs upon the 

breeze ? 
'Tis time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Saltee's, 
For by her ponderous press of sail and by her consorts four 
We saw our morning visitor of a British man-of-war. 

Up spake our noble Captain then, as a shot ahead of us passed : 
"Haul snug your flowing courses ! Lay your topsail to the 

mast !" 
Those Englishmen gave three hurrahs from the deck of their 

covered ark. 
And we answered back by a solid broadside from the deck of our 

patriot bark. 

"Out booms ! Out booms !" our skipper cried. "Out booms and 

give her sheet." 
And the swiftest keel that ever was launched shot ahead of the 

British fleet, 
And amidst a thundering shower of shot with stem-sails hoisting 

away, 
Down the old North Channel Paul Jones did steer just at the 

break of day. 

At the time of his death, July, 1792, both France and 
America claimed John Paul Jones as their hero, for at 
the close of the American Revolution he continued to fight 
in the cause of liberty and he was engaged in planning 
splendid work for France when he died suddenly in Paris. 

"I have drawn my sword only from motives of humanity 



200 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and in support of the dignity of human rights," Paul Jones 
once said; and it was a just boast. To-day the whole 
world recognizes his ability and the disinterestedness of his 
conduct. 

That the great Napoleon held Paul Jones in high esteem 
we know from the fact that in 1805, while he was musing 
gloomily over the news from Trafalgar, he asked his 
Marshal: "How old was Paul Jones when he died?" 
Berthier rephed that he thought he was forty-five years 
old. "Then," said Napoleon, "he did not fulfil his destiny. 
Had he lived to this time France might have had an 
admiral." 

For a hundred and thirteen years the body of John 
Paul Jones, the founder of the American navy, rested in 
France. But in 1905, through the untiring efforts of 
Horace Porter (the American Ambassador to France) 
and the courtesy of the French nation, his body was recov- 
ered from an umnarked grave and borne with great honors 
to the United States. It now rests in the crypt of the 
chapel at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where Ameri- 
can boys are being trained to carry on the work of a great 
navy. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE LAST YEAKS OF WAR IN THE NORTH AND THE 
TREASON OF BENEDICT ARNOLD 

WHEN England found herself involved in a 
war with France and Spain, there was talk 
among her ministers of conciliating the Ameri- 
cans and winning back their affection. But the time for 
any such action was long past, even had the King not re- 
fused to consider it. The war in America continued, but 
after Burgoyne's defeat the British policy was one of 
defense ; no attack was made on the people in the northern 
States. 

With the coming of spring, 1778, it was expected that 
Howe would make some decisive movement against the 
American forces. He, with his officers, had spent the 
winter "in sloth and dissipation" in and near Philadelphia, 
and May found him still unready to attack Washington's 
army. 

Howe complained that his situation was hopeless, that 
his army was too small for an important undertaking and 
he begged to be relieved of his command. Sir Henry 
Clinton was sent to take his place, the British ministers 
hoping that he might succeed where Howe had failed. 

On the 18th of JNIay a farewell celebration was arranged 
in Howe's honor by his staff officers, who seem to have 
held him in high esteem. The festival took the form of a 
sham tournament and was carried out on a most magnifi- 
cent scale. 

The merrymakers embarked on the Delaware River 
above Philadelphia and, to the music of a hundred and 

201 



202 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

eight hautboys, rowed two miles downstream, in galleys 
gay with colors and streamers. Landing to the tune of 
God Save the King, they marched between lines of sol- 
diers to a meadow, where in the presence of their chosen 
ladies raised on thrones, the officers — who were dressed as 
knights and squires — engaged in a tournament. Promi- 
nent in this "solemn buffoonery" was Major Andre, who 
was soon to meet with a tragic fate. 

A great feast followed the tournament. Twelve hun- 
dred dishes graced the table, where twelve hundred wax 
candles made a festive glow. The supper was served by 
negroes in oriental trappings with silver collars and 
bracelets. 

Before the banquet was at an end Howe received word 
that Lafayette with twenty-five hundred men had crossed 
the Schuylkill and taken up a position on the range of 
Barren Hill. The British general decided to capture the 
party so that his career in America might end in glory. 
In person he led fifty-seven hundred picked men in an 
attempt to secure "the little boy," whom he wished to take 
as a prisoner to England ; but Lafayette was too quick for 
him. Slipping away into safety with all his following, he 
robbed Howe of the last chance of retrieving a threadbare 
reputation. 

Clinton's first move, when he came into authority, was 
to abandon Philadelphia. He feared an attack from the 
French, whose warships were reported to be cruising near 
the American coast, and so decided to make New York 
his headquarters. 

The surrender at Saratoga had roused the Americans to 
a full sense of their own power. The coming of warm 
weather had relieved the soldiers of their worst sufferings ; 
so Washington decided to attack the British while they 
were on the march. 

The two armies came together at Monmouth. Charles 



LAST YEARS OF WAR IN THE NORTH 203 

Lee, commanding the Americans, lost control of his men 
and withdrew in disorder, but Washington arrived in time 
partially to save the situation. Through the day the 
British held their ground, but when night came they re- 
tired. After that they were allowed to resume their march 
to New York, which they reached without further 
interruption. 

The battle of Monmouth was the last serious ensaffe- 
ment in the north, although a brilliant affair took place 
when Stony Point, on the Hudson, was captured by 
American light infantry, under General Anthony Wayne. 

On the evening of July 15th, 1779, Wayne led his men 
by mountainous routes to within a mile and a half of the 
fort. All the dogs along the road were killed, so that their 
barking might not warn the British of an approach, and 
at midnight the Americans rushed on the fort and took the 
garrison prisoners. 

A year later the American cause very nearly suffered 
disaster through the treason of Benedict Arnold, the man 
whose name will ever be a blot on the page of American 
history. 

Arnold had distinguished himself at Ticonderoga and 
at Quebec. It was he who led the famous charge at Bemis 
Heights that resulted in Burgoyne's surrender. But al- 
though he was an able fighting man, his sense of honor was 
as deficient as his vanity was strong. 

When Philadelphia was evacuated by the British, 
Arnold was put in command of the town. Always a 
spendthrift himself, he married an extravagant wife and 
soon got very heavily into debt. To extricate himself, it 
was said that he used money belonging to the public. For 
this offense he was tried and convicted. He was even 
publicly reprimanded by Washington. 

Embittered and reckless, Arnold brooded on revenge for 
what he considered an indignity. He opened a cor- 



204 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

respondence with Sir Henry Clinton, with the intention of 
betraying his country to the enemy. 

In 1780, as to-day, a strong fortress stood upon the rocks 
two hundred feet above the level of the Hudson River at 
West Point. This was one of the most important fort- 
resses in the countrj^ for possession of it kept open the 
route of communication between New Jersey and the col- 
onies north of the Hudson. With diabolical cunning 
Arnold got himself appointed to the command of West 
Point so that he might surrender the valuable prize into 
the hands of the British. 

Clinton, who was in New York, sent Major Andre to 
arrange terms of surrender with the treacherous Arnold. 
Andre was a brave and merry-hearted youth, who thought 
it would be a fine thing to have the glory of gaining West 
Point for his King, and he undertook the dangerous enter- 
prise with eagerness. 

It was a calm September night, with just the premoni- 
tion of a haunting autumn sadness in the air, when a boat 
put off from a British ship of war and rowed with muffled 
oars toward a secluded part of the river-bank. It was 
bearing Andre to meet Arnold. 

For long hours the two men discussed the details of 
Arnold's dishonorable bargain, and when they were finally 
agreed as to terms the sun was coloring the horizon. It 
was too late for Andre to get back to his ship unnoticed. 
For the day Arnold hid the British officer within the 
American lines. Andre completed his arrangements and 
was given plans of the betrayed fortress. It only re- 
mained for him now to get back to the ship whose sails 
gleamed dully against the sparkling waters of the Hudson. 
Darkness came again, but with it new difficulties. The 
river was watched more closely than ever that night, for 
West Point sheltered an important guest. The Com- 
mander-in-Chief had suddenly appeared at the fort. 



LAST YEARS OF WAR IN THE NORTH 205 

To escape by water was now impossible, and Andre's 
only course was to ride to New York, fifty miles away. 
He disguised himself as best he could, and Arnold fur- 
nished him with a horse and a pass so that he got safely 
through the American lines. Then, with danger behind 
him, as he thought, the young man rode forward under the 
stars. 

Suddenly three armed men stepped out from behind 
some trees and a peremptory hand was laid on his bridle 
rein. One of the men wore a British uniform and Andre 
thought he was among friends. To their challenge he an- 
swered that he was a British officer on very special duty 
and that he must not be detained ; but he had made a fatal 
mistake. The men were Americans and the dress that 
had deceived him was one that had been supplied to the 
man who wore it when he was a British prisoner despoiled 
of his own richer garment. 

Andre was searched and in his boots were found the 
drawings of the West Point fortress ; so his captors knew 
that he was a spy. In vain he offered them money for his 
freedom. He was taken to the nearest military station 
and word of his arrest sent to General Washington. 

Arnold heard of Andre's predicament in time to escape 
before his own treachery was revealed. He fled to the 
British army and lived to fight vindictiveh'^ against 
America ! 

Andre was tried by an American court-martial, sen- 
tenced as a spy and hanged. His fate excited deep sym- 
pathy, for he was a man of such attractive character and 
of so many accomplishments that he was loved by friend 
and foe. Washington felt, however, that it was necessary 
to make an example of him; so the poor young man paid 
the extreme penalty. 

He died the inglorious death of a spy, but he died a 
martyr for his country, as Great Britain acknowledged 



206 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

forty years later when his remains were sent home to Eng- 
land and laid in Westminster Abbey. 

Early in the struggle the American army had suffered 
the loss of a brave soldier whose death resembled Andi-e's. 
This was Captain Nathan Hale, a Connecticut lad, who 
volunteered to penetrate the British lines and learn some- 
thing of the plans of the enemy for Washington. He was 
detected by a sentry, taken to New York, and there 
hanged. Hale was only twenty-one years of age and the 
fearless way in which he faced death, regretting nothing 
except that he had but one life to lose in the cause of 
liberty, has made his name sacred to every hero-loving 
heart. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE REVOLUTION CARRIED INTO THE SOUTH 

WAR brings with it great hardship and America 
had paid a heavy price for every year of her 
struggle toward freedom. Thousands of her 
sons had perished in battle or died from disease caused by 
insanitary conditions. Trade did not exist and fields went 
unplanted. There was such a scarcity of money in the 
country that Congress was forced to issue a paper cur- 
rency to pay the soldiers ; but this was of so little value that, 
as Washington remarked, a wagon-load of money would 
scarcely buy a wagon-load of provisions. 

Terrible bitterness grew up in the hearts of the people 
against a government whose selfishness had caused all this 
suffering and the name of England became hateful in 
America where it had once been loved. 

The more far-sighted of the British ministers were be- 
ginning to realize that Pitt had spoken as a true prophet 
when, in his famous protest against the American war, he 
had said: "I love and honor the English troops. I know 
their virtue and their valor. I know they can achieve any- 
thing except impossibility. My lords, you cannot conquer 
America!" 

Sir Henry Clinton, now in command of all the British 
troops in America, was wise enough to see that it was in- 
deed impossible to conquer the northern and middle States, 
for the people were not subdued there even when their 
armies were beaten. But he hoped that in the South, 
where the population was scattered and largelj'' composed 
of slaves, he might stand a chance of victory. He be- 

207 



208 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lieved, and not without foundation, that in Georgia and in 
the Carolinas there were yet many loyalists who would 
welcome the King's troops. He therefore pushed forward 
preparations for a campaign in the South. His plan was 
to win a way along the Savannah River and then approach 
Charleston by land. 

Colonel Campbell was sent round by sea with thirty- 
four hundred men, and General Prevost, the British Gov- 
ernor of East Florida, was ordered to join him with a 
force of Tories who were eager to have a part in the plun- 
dering of the rich plantations of Georgia. 

General Robert Howe, the American commander in 
charge of the defense, trusted too much to the swampy 
character of the ground for protection against surprise and 
so failed to guard sufficiently the flank of his army. A 
crafty negro led a detachment of the British through a 
rice-swamp so that they were able to fall upon the Ameri- 
cans from the side, while at the same time a fierce onslaught 
was made in the front. Howe was defeated, his stores 
confiscated, and the southern bank of the river, for one 
hundred and fifty miles above Savannah, was claimed by 
the British. 

Campbell, delighted with his success, promised protec- 
tion to the inhabitants on condition that they would "sup- 
port the royal government with their arms." Those who 
refused to do this were crowded on board prison-ships, 
where most of them died of infection. Some of the people 
fled to South Carolina rather than join the British 
standard, but many of the planters preferred to save their 
lives and property by making professions of loyalty. 

In 1779, the Americans, assisted by the French fleet, 
made an attempt to recapture Savannah, but failed. 
After this the war degenerated into a series of brutal raids 
and skirmishes. Some towns and numerous farmhouses 



REVOLUTION CARRIED INTO SOUTH 209 

were burned by the English, who were learning to plunder 
and pillage without mercy. 

On the frontier the fighting was particularly ruthless, 
for there the Indians were persuaded to join the British 
and they introduced their horrible methods of warfare into 
the contest. Wyoming, a prosperous settlement on the 
Pennsylvania frontier, was surprised by a company of 
these savages. The small force of soldiers who defended 
the place was overpowered and the inhabitants were massa- 
cred. A few months later the Americans avenged this 
outrage by sending General Sullivan with four thousand 
men into the Indian territory to burn the villages and drive 
the Red Men away from the frontier. 

Charleston was taken by a British fleet and army in 
]May, 1780. The Americans seemed everywhere to be los- 
ing ground. The command of all the troops in the South 
had been given to General Gates, who, in spite of the repu- 
tation he had gained in the North at the time of Burgoyne's 
surrender, proved utterly incapable. At the battle of 
Camden, in South Carolina, Gates was beaten and liis en- 
tire force was put to flight. This left the Americans with- 
out any army worthy of the name in the South; but the 
British found it increasingly diflicult to gain any perma- 
nent advantage ; for there, as in the North, the indomitable 
spirit of the people was m stern opposition to British 
methods and British rule. 

The struggle brought into prominence several heroic 
men whose deeds were typical of the popular feeling. 

In 1776, when Fort Sullivan in Charleston harbor was 
being defended, the fort bore a flag with a crescent on it. 
This was before the Americans had adopted the stars and 
stripes for their flag and the crescent moon was supposed 
to be a symbol of the faith of the people that their country 
would wax stronger as time advanced. In the midst of 



210 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the hottest fighting this flag was shot away. Without a 
moment's hesitation a sergeant, named Jasper, leaped 
down outside the fort and picked up the flag, fastened it 
to a staff, which he stuck in the sand, and then returned un- 
harmed to the fort. In 1779 this same man was engaged 
in the attack on Savannah when the colors of his own regi- 
ment were shot away. Jasper tried to replace them on the 
parapet, and although he was mortally wounded, he suc- 
ceeded in saving the colors. 

Many such instances of devoted bravery on the part of 
the patriots weakened the self-confidence of the British 
and tended to make them doubtful of their final success. 
Two men from South Carolina were held in almost super- 
stitious fear by the enemy. One was General Thomas 
Sumter, who fought so resolutely and with such skill that 
he earned for himself the title of "The Game Cock." The 
other was General Francis Marion, who, because of his 
cunning strategy, was called "The Swamp Fox." 

In the blackest hour of the American cause in South 
Carolina, General Marion formed what came to be known 
as "Marion's Brigade." His men were all animated with 
a spirit as patriotic as their commander's and they seemed 
capable of facing every kind of hardship. They lived 
upon potatoes and hominy and slept on the ground with- 
out blankets. Their arms were a curious conglomeration 
of farm implements: sabers hammered out of old saws, 
pruning-knives — anything they could get ; and for bullets 
they were often forced to melt down pewter mugs and 
platters. 

"Well knows the fair and friendly moon 
The band that Marion leads. 
The glitter of their rifles, 

The scampering of their steeds." 

With his hardy company Marion could move with won- 
derful swiftness. He knew every path and track through 



REVOLUTION CARRIED INTO SOUTH 211 

the forests and swamp ; so that it was impossible to entrap 
him. He would fall upon a weak point in the enemy's de- 
fenses and then be off and away before the British could 
saddle their horses to follow. It was 

"A moment in the British camp — 
A moment — and away 
Back to the pathless forest, 
Before the peep of day." 

When he was hard-pressed JNIarion would disband his men, 
leaving each one to look after himself. The enemy would 
next discover his whereabouts by his making a sudden raid, 
in full force again, on some distant post. He gave the 
British no peace; yet with all his boldness Marion was 
famed for his gentleness with his men, his sweet temper, 
and his forbearance toward his foes. He was stern only 
in opposing harsh measures against the Tories and in re- 
straining his troops from plundering. 

An incident belonging to this period of the war and one 
which had important consequences was the bold march of 
General George Rogers Clarke, who led a little band of 
frontiersmen to the distant posts on the Mississippi River. 
These he captured, along with Vincennes, a strong fortress 
beside the Wabash River. The securing of these remote 
posts gave the people of the United States a great ad- 
vantage when peace was finally made with England, for 
since they owned the forts they had a just claim to the vast 
territory north of the Ohio. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR 

THE last years of the Revolution were, perhaps, the 
most interesting of the whole war because the op- 
posing armies were more equally matched than 
ever before. Soon after his capture of Charleston, Clin- 
ton was obliged to return to New York to watch the move- 
ments of a large French army that had landed at Newport. 
He left the British troops in the South to the command of 
the ablest of all the English generals in America — Lord 
Cornwallis. 

In 1781, General Nathanael Greene was sent to take 
charge of what was left of the American forces in the 
South. After General Washington, Greene was the most 
scientific soldier that the war produced ; his skilful recruit- 
ing and strict discipline changed the wavering forces into 
a strong and dependable arm3^ 

The great problem which Greene and Cornwallis each 
had to face was how to make the physical conditions of 
the country serve the advantage of his army. It was like 
playing a monstrous game of chess, with South Carolina 
for the chess-board; for the State is divided by rivers into 
rough squares of good ground, but with each square 
fringed by morasses. For troops to cross these bogs, even 
in small parties, was difficult; and the transport of heavy 
guns and stores was well-nigh impossible. The stagnant 
water in the marshes make them hotbeds of disease; but 
farther inland, where the rivers branch into smaller 
streams, the soil becomes firmer and the air purer. The 

212 



END OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR 213 

great point in the campaign was for the opponents to push 
each other eastward and to gain control of the less marshy 
country. 

The strategy of the two generals was about equally 
matched, and their maneuvers, which were watched with 
breathless interest, gave rise to the famihar ballad that 
begins 

"Cornwallis led a country dance, 
The like was never seen, Sir, 
Much retrogade and much advance 
And all with General Greene, Sir." 

For a time the advantage would seem to be all with 
Greene; and then again with Cornwallis. But for every 
victory the British general gained, he suffered heavy losses, 
and the territory under his command began to dwindle 
alarmingly. In the hope of strengthening his forces, 
Cornwallis marched northward to Virginia. Some British 
troops were there already and he thought that by combin- 
ing these with his own men, he would be stronger than any 
army that the Americans could send against him. 

Phillips, the leader of the contingent in Virginia, died 
before Cornwallis reached him, and the troops he had com- 
manded fell to the leadership of the traitor Benedict 
Arnold. With him Cornwallis refused to have any deal- 
ings, and so Arnold was obliged to return to New York. 

In the meantime Washington had sent Lafayette into 
Virginia with one division of light infantry to capture 
Arnold. Some skirmishes took place between Lafayette 
and Cornwallis which used up time but had little other 
result. 

In obedience to orders received from Clinton, Corn- 
wallis finally established his army at Yorktown, which he 
strongly fortified. Lafayette encamped some miles away, 



214 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

beside the Pamunkey River, but near enough to the British 
troops to be able to keep the American commander-in-chief 
informed of their doings. 

This was the state of affairs in September, 1781, when 
Washington suddenly appeared before Yorktown with 
twelve thousand men. The great General had been ham- 
pered by lack of men and money, but now reinforced bj'- 
friendly French troops (under General Rochambeau), he 
was at last able to deliver a decisive blow to British author- 
ity in America. 

Cornwallis was taken by surprise. He sent to Clinton 
for help ; but it was too late. The French fleet blockaded 
the British troops at Yorktown while the American and 
French armies besieged the place. The British fought 
valiantly to hold out against their assailants ; but in a short 
time the defenses of Yorktown had been battered down by 
the American artillery. The British guns were silenced 
and their shipping was in flames. Their ammunition was 
finished and the only hope for the army lay in escape. 

One dark night Cornwallis tried to get his men across 
the York River, but a violent wind storm arose and scat- 
tered his boats. After that there was nothing to do but 
surrender. 

On the 19th of October, 1781, the British army laid 
down its arms. This surrender robbed the English of 
their last hope of victory. George III was not ready, 
even then, to end the war, but Parliament took the matter 
out of his stubborn hands by declaring that "all who should 
advise the continuance of the war are enemies to the 
country." 

The King insisted, however, in making one last diplo- 
matic attempt to win back the submission and loyalty of 
the Americans. He sent his third son. Prince William 
Henry (afterward King William IV) to New York, in 
the hope that his gracious presence would shame the pa- 



END OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR 215 

triots into recognition of British authority. The royal 
youngster was only sixteen years old ; he crossed the ocean 
as a midshipman, accompanied by Admiral Digby. The 
Tory authorities in New York overwhelmed him with flat- 
tery ; but the rather pathetic visit of the Prince to the land 
that had no need of him was not a success. The poor boy's 
bewilderment is best described in a rhyme called The 
Royal Adventure that was written at the time: 

"The tories came with long address; 
With poems groaned the royal press; 

And all in William's praise — 
The youth, astonished, looked about 
To find their vast dominions out, 

Then answered in amaze: 

'Where all your vast domain can be, 
Friends, for my soul I cannot see; 

'Tis but an empty name ; 
Three wasted islands and a town 
In rubbish buried — half burnt down, 

Is all that we can claim ; 

I am of royal birth, 'tis true. 

But what, my sons, can princes do. 

No armies to command? 
Cornwallis conquered and distressed — 
Sir Henry Clinton grown a jest — 

I curse — and quit the land !' " 

The British people were heartily tired of the conflict. 
Eight years of war had convinced them that the Americans 
could not be made to yield allegiance to any but the sov- 
ereign will of liberty. 

Peace was in sight, and the Americans were frantic with 
joy! One man actually died from excitement when he 
heard the news of the surrcader at Yorktown, and it is 



216 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

said that others lost theu' reason. But the more temperate 
patriots were content with proclaiming a day on which to 
give thanks publicly to God that the long and bitter strug- 
gle was about to close. 

Terms of peace were finally agreed upon in Paris, on 
September 3, 1783. The independence of the United 
States was fully acknowledged by Great Britain and 
boundaries were fixed which included the territory, except 
Florida, south of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence 
River and east of the Mississippi. 

The United States of America now stood forth alone, 
an infant country, ready and eager to make its own future 
and pay for its own mistakes. Great Britain might have 
expressed her feelings in regard to the new nation, in the 
words of Robert Louis Stevenson, written a century later; 

**You speak another tongue than mine, 
Though both were English born ; 
I towards the night of time decline ; 
You mount into the morn. 

Youth shall grow great and strong and free, 

But age must still decay; 
Tomorrow for the States — for me, 

England and Yesterday." 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

THE UNITED STATES ADOPTS THE CONSTITUTION 

WHEN peace brought the United States leisure 
to consider their own affairs, they found them 
to be in a serious tangle. 

The people were exhausted from the strain of the long 
war, their fields were devastated and their towns lay in 
ruins. There was scarcely any money in the countrj'-, and 
the national debt amounted to seventy million dollars! 

This was a bad state of things, but not so bad as it at 
first appeared ; for America was a storehouse of riches that 
waited to be unlocked. The forests were full of fine tim- 
ber, and the ground hoarded treasures of coal and iron, 
while the fertile earth could be made to yield harvests that, 
through the magic of trade, were easil}^ convertible into 
gold. 

You may believe that the quick-witted Americans were 
not long in turning the resources of their wonderful coun- 
try to account; but they were hampered by the unwieldy 
nature of their government, which was really thirteen dis- 
tinct governments held together in the most casual way. 
Congress had mismanaged affairs during the Revolution, 
and now proved unequal to the task of making each State 
pay its proportion toward the war expenses. 

There were some years of discomfort and discontent be- 
fore the people realized that to be free did not mean to be 
shiftless. But gradually they came to see that they must 
agree upon a more workable form of government : one that 
would draw the States into a truer union and compel 

217 



218 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

obedience to an authority that should stand for the public 
good. 

If you have watched a child learning to walk, you can 
form some idea of the hesitations and false starts made by 
the United States in their years of political infancy. 
Every known form of government was proposed to solve 
the difficulties of the youthful nation. It was even hinted 
that the mantle of kingship had fallen from heaven upon 
the broad shoulders of George Washington, who was ex- 
pected by some of his admirers to rule (as by right divine) 
the country that he so faithfully had served. But this idea 
horrified Washington ; for the only kingdom that he craved 
was that of his home. 

At the close of the war the Commander-in-Chief had 
sheathed his sword and gladly turned his face toward beau- 
tiful JNIount Vernon. He asked nothing better than to 
live out his days in the quiet management of his estates. 

To-day if you visit INIount Vernon, you will most likely 
approach the mansion b}'- river, and the tolling of the ship's 
bell, before you reach the landing-stage, will remind you 
tliat the stately house with its pillared porches is but the 
shrine of sacred memories. But in the days when it was a 
home, when General Washington and his lady lived there, 
the entire estate pulsed with life. Song floated up to the 
"big house" from the white-washed cabins of the negroes, 
and the busy sounds of industry mingled with the gentle 
slap-slapping of the river against its pleasant banks. An 
extract from the diary of a visitor to Mount Vernon in 
1785 gives some conception of the plantation as it was 
then: 

"I rose early and took a walk about the General's 
grounds, which are really beautifully laid out. He has 
about four thousand acres well cultivated, and superin- 
tends the whole himself. Indeed his great pride now is to 
be thought the first farmer in America. ... It is astonish- 



THE CONSTITUTION 219 

ing what a number of small houses the General has upon 
his estate for his different workmen and negroes to live in. 
He has everything within himself — carpenters, bricklayers, 
brewers, blacksmiths, bakers, and even a well assorted store 
for the use of his family and servants." 

It took no mean executive ability to superintend such 
an estate as this, and Washington's pride in his skill as a 
farmer was his nearest approach to vainglory. 

In 1787, however, w^hen affairs reached such a state of 
feebleness that it seemed as though the government might 
bring the country to ruin, General Washington set his 
personal inclination aside and accepted the presidency of a 
convention, held in Philadelphia, to decide upon some fun- 
damental principles of agreement that would strengthen 
the nation. It never occurred to the people to do away 
with the dividing-lines and make themselves into one state, 
so strong was the old feeling of separateness that had 
grown up in the colonies, and it took all of Washington's 
diplomacy to persuade the members from the different 
States to lay aside petty jealousy and form a strong central 
government. 

The discussions in the Convention sometimes grew so 
heated and the delegates so dissatisfied that they with- 
drew. It was on one of these occasions that the aged and 
much loved Franklin rose in his place and proposed that 
henceforth the sessions should open with prayer. "There 
is no hope," he said, "except from Heaven ; the wit of man 
has been exhausted." 

It must have been the prayer that enabled the Conven- 
tion to weather the worst storms of jealousy so that the 
delegates at length framed the Constitution as it was 
finally adopted — the same Constitution that, with a few 
amendments, governs the United States to-day. Under 
its decree the machinery of government is divided into 
three parts, each of which is confined to its own duties. 



220 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

There is, first, the law-making, or Legislative Depart- 
ment which is called in the Constitution "the Congress." 
It is divided into two parts : a House of Representatives, 
chosen by the people, and a Senate chosen by the legis- 
latures of the different States. It was decreed that each 
State should have its own two houses of legislation and a 
governor, to deal with such affairs as alone concern the 
State and are not, therefore, brought before the general 
government. 

Second, there is the department that carries out the laws. 
It is known as the Executive Department and is made up 
of the President and those appointed under him. The 
President of the United States is chosen for four years. 
During his term of office he is Commander-in-Chief of the 
Arm}'- and Xavy and he appoints all the executive officers, 
with the consent of the Senate. A Vice-President also is 
chosen, so that in case of the President's death or resigna- 
tion there is some one to take his place. 

The third department provided for under the Consti- 
tution is the Judicial Department. It consists of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States and such lower courts 
as Congress may establish. The Judges of the United 
States Court are appointed by the President with the ad- 
vice and consent of the Senate. 

An important provision in the Constitution gave Con- 
gress the right to stop the bringing of slaves into the coun- 
try after the year 1808. Another pertinent clause provides 
that Congress shall not interfere with religious freedom, or 
with the freedom of speech or with the freedom of the 
press. 

Having passed the Constitution, the Convention sent it 
to Congress, whose members were charged to submit it to 
the different States for consideration. As soon as nine 
States ratified it, the new government was to be put into 
operation. 



THE CONSTITUTION 221 

Nearly a year went by before the States agreed to accept 
the Constitution; but finally it was ratified, and the next 
step was to choose a President. This was not a difficult 
task, for the people were unanimous in their demand for 
General Washington. It had been arranged that the new 
government should begin on the first Wednesday in March, 
1789, which fell on the 4th. On the evening of the 3rd, a 
salute was fired from the battery at New York — the 
solemn farewell to the old form of government, for the 
Constitution was to replace it. At daybreak, at noon, 
and at six in the evening of the next day, March 4th, guns 
again boomed out and all the church bells rang a welcome 
to the Constitution. The beginning of the new govern- 
ment, however, was delayed for nearly two months. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE INAUGURATION OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT 

WASHINGTON had enjoyed only five short 
years of the quiet hfe that he loved; but he 
who had never refused the call of public duty 
once again put personal inclination aside and took his place 
as the foremost figure in American affairs, assuming 
courageously the difficulties of unraveling the tangle of the 
new Republic. He was elected without a dissenting voice, 
and John Adams, of Massachusetts, was chosen Vice- 
President. 

It was on the 14th of April, 1789, that Washington re- 
ceived news of his election. On the 16th he left Mount 
Vernon for New York, where Congress was then in ses- 
sion. There were, of course, no railroads at that time and 
the General traveled in his own coach. The country roads 
were sweet with spring, and the singing of a myriad birds 
made music as the rumbling grandeur of the Mount Ver- 
non equipage rolled on beneath the flowering trees. This 
journey was an opportunitj^ for the people to do honor to 
their hero. Everywhere they greeted him with love and 
confidence, secure in the belief that his wisdom and sa- 
gacity were all that the States needed to bring them out of 
the bondage of their own mistakes. 

Fine clothes that had been put away in lavender for 
many years, again saw the light of day. Gentlemen on 
horseback escorted Washington from place to place and 
the people vied with one another in pressing the hospitality 
of their homes upon the traveler. 

When the coach clattered into Philadelphia the joy of 

222 



INAUGURATION OP WASHINGTON 223 

the citizens knew no bounds. Bells rang, cannons were 
fii'ed, and the civic and military authorities paraded the 
streets. At Trenton when Washington reached the 
bridge over which he had led a victorious little army to 
fight the battle of Princeton, he passed under a triumphal 
arch put up by the women. It consisted of thirteen pillars 
upholding a large dome surmounted by a sunflower, with 
the inscription, "To thee alone." Another legend read, 
"The Defender of the Mothers will be the Protector of the 
Daughters." 

Just beyond the bridge the women of Trenton were 
waiting to receive Washington and as he passed under the 
dome they began to sing: 

'*Welcome, Mighty Chief, once more 
Welcome to this grateful shore. 

Virgins fair and matrons grave, 
Those thy conquering arms did save, 
Build for thee triumphal bowers — 
Strew ye fair his way with flowers, 
Strew your Hero's way with flowers." 

As the last lines were sung a bevy of little girls stepped 
forward and scattered flowers before the newly elected 
President. He was deeply touched by this pretty cere- 
mony. He thanked the children in words that they never 
forgot, and before leaving Trenton the next morning he 
wrote a few lines to their mothers. 

At Elizabethtown, he was met by a deputation from 
Congress with a splendid barge that had been built to carry 
him to New York. This barge was manned by thirteen 
master pilots dressed in white and was escorted by six other 
barges bearing high officials of the old Confederation. 

At the entrance to New York Bay, a crowd of river 
craft all gay with flags fell into line, until the procession 



224 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

stretched out for over a mile. In this fashion the pageant 
swept on toward New York, past the Spanish warship 
Galveston, which fired a salute; past the ship North 
Carolina which echoed the Spaniard's courtesy with the 
discharge of thirteen guns, and so around the head of 
Governor's Island and to the landing-place at Murray's 
"V^Hiarf . Here Washington stepped on to a carpeted stair, 
where he was received bj;^ Governor Clinton and a multi- 
tude of cheering citizens and escorted by all the troops in 
the city to a house made ready for his use. 

That evening New York was brilliantly illuminated and 
a display of fireworks took place, while songs and odes 
written for the occasion were sung or recited in every 
tavern of the cit5\ The most popular of these was a song 
sung to the air of God Save the King : 

*'Hail, thou auspicious day! 
For let America 

Thy praise resound. 
Joy to our native land ! 
Let ev'ry heart expand. 
For Washington's at hand, 
With glory crowned." 

On the 80th of April, a week after his arrival in New 
York, Washington took a solemn oath to support the Con- 
stitution of his beloved country. This ceremony took 
place on the balcony of Federal Hall. The windows and 
house-tops of the neighboring buildings were crowded with 
spectators and a great throng of people filled the street, 
their ej'^es all focused on the upright person of their chosen 
leader, who stood near the balcony railing. Behind him 
were gathered many of the ablest and most prominent men 
of America. Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the 
State of New York, administered the oath of office and 




ON THE 30Til OK AI'KIL, WASHINCTON TOOK A SOLEMN () \ I ir lO SUPI'OKT 
THE CONSTITUTION l)F IIIS IlEl.OVED (OUNTRY" 



m 



INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON 225 

when the last words had been uttered he turned to the 
people and cried out: "Long live George Washington, 
President of the United States!" 

The cry was instantly taken up, and amid the hurrahs 
of thousands of enthusiastic men and women there sounded 
the boom of thirteen guns from the battery, announcing 
that the new government was completely organized. 

It was now the President's duty to enter the Senate 
Chamber and deliver an address to each branch of the na- 
tional legislature. His speeches were earnest and to the 
point, but his voice was broken and hoarse with emotion 
and there was trace of embarrassment in his manner; for 
the first President was a modest man with no exalted opin- 
ion of his own worth. He declared his conviction that the 
same Great Being who had brought the American people 
safely through the long struggle for independence, would 
still watch over their efforts to do right and help them to 
establish on a firm basis a form of government that would 
be respected by all the world. 

The formalities of the day were closed with a religious 
service held in St. Paul's church. 

That evening bonfires were lighted in the streets, candles 
were put in the windows of the houses, and paper lanterns 
swung in bright festoons from door to door. Everywhere 
there was rejoicing; and when the last flicker of the illumi- 
nation, which was a symbol of content, had burned down 
and the tired city went to rest, the calmty glowing stars 
took up the happy watch and seemingly endorsed the 
drowsy murmur of the sleeping people : "Long live George 
Washington, President of the United States !" 

"My station," Washington had said to the crowd that 
saw him take the oath of office, "is new. I walk on un- 
trodden ground." But who so fit as he to be the pioneer 
President, to set an example for all time? We call him 



226 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"The Father of His Country"; but he is more than that. 
He is the Sir Galahad of American history — the true 
Knight whose "strength was as the strength of ten because 
his heart was pui-e." 



CHAPTER XLI 

THROUGH THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION 

WASHINGTON was called "not merely to 
preside over a nation, to administer a govern- 
ment — but to make a nation — to create a gov- 
ernment." He appointed John Jay first Chief Justice of 
the new republic ; Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs — later called Secretary of State; and General 
Henry Knox, Secretary of War; but a more difficult post 
to fill was that of Secretary of the Treasury. 

In spite of all that the old Congress could do, the States 
had paid little heed to their money obligations. The most 
urgent question, therefore, that the new govei-nment had 
to deal with was that of finance. The national debt had to 
be met, the national credit re-established, and the soldiers 
who had fought in the Revolutionary War and were clam- 
oring for their long deferred pay had to be satisfied. Af- 
ter careful consideration the President appointed Alex- 
ander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury. 

Hamilton possessed the genius of a great financier. 
His career had been a remarkable one. Born in the West 
Indian island of Nevis, he was the son of a Scotch mer- 
chant who had married a French girl. His friends saw 
that he was a boy of unusual ability and he was sent to 
Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to get a better education than 
his home provided. In 1774 Hamilton entered King's 
College (now Columbia University) in New York. 
Wliile he was there the first open disagreement between 
Great Britain and the colonies occurred and this student of 
eighteen wrote a series of papers in defense of colonial 

227 



228 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rights which brought him to the notice of the chief Ameri- 
can leaders. He fought under Washington in the War of 
Independence and was for a time the General's aide-de- 
camp. When peace was declared he left the army with 
the rank of colonel and, after some years of legal study, 
became one of the most prominent lawyers in New York. 

Hamilton had a great deal to do with the shaping of the 
Constitution, and his clear grasp of ways and means quali- 
fied him to deal with the most pressing questions of the 
day. He did such able work in the department to which 
he was appointed that Daniel Webster said of him: "He 
smote the rock of national resources, and abundant streams 
of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of 
the public credit and it sprung upon its feet." 

There were, of course, many people ready to object to 
Hamilton's methods of raising money. He imposed du- 
ties on shipping, on goods imported from abroad, and on 
spirits manufactured at home. The taxation aroused re- 
sistance from those who felt it to be a restriction on their 
liberty, or who deemed that it might be as inconvenient to 
pay taxes to a home government as it had been to pay them 
to the British King. During the second session of the first 
Congress the people split into two great political parties. 
Those who supported the Administration and believed in 
Alexander Hamilton's pohcy were known as Federalists, 
while those who feared the power of the Constitution and 
opposed Hamilton's policy were called Federal Republi- 
cans. Thus was the great party strife born in the United 
States. 

In 1790 the capital was removed from New York to 
Philadelphia ; but that was only a temporary arrangement. 
The Constitution provided that the seat of national gov- 
ernment should be situated in a district, of not more than 
ten square miles, over which it should have complete con- 
trol. Already the necessary buildings were being erected 



THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION 229 

on the site chosen beside the Potomac River, where the 
capital of the United States now stands — a beautiful city, 
worthy of the proud name it bears, the name of Washing- 
ton. The "ten square miles" set aside for the capital of 
the United States was called the District of Columbia. In 
this way the names of two builders of American history — 
George Washington and Christopher Columbus — were in- 
dissolubly associated. 

From the very first the new government inspired con- 
Jidence, and in spite of party disagreement the country 
settled down to enjoy a season of comparative peace and 
of steady growth. Commerce revived, and the stars and 
stripes became familiar on every sea. There were serious 
wars with the Indians on the frontier, but these only helped 
to strengthen the sense of union among the States, for 
in striving against a common foe the people of the new 
republic learned to depend on one another in a way that 
made for mutual understanding. 

At the end of the eighteenth century the entire IJnited 
States was not much larger, geographically, than the pres- 
ent State of Texas. But the border settlers were growing 
restless; their eyes turned eagerly toward the vast un- 
known, and their thoughts went before them, subduing the 
wilderness in the direction of the Great Lakes. The gov- 
ernmental authorities felt little interest in the vast regions 
toward the northwest; they had no desire to widen their 
boundaries and so add to their already heaw responsibili- 
ties. They felt that the Indians had a just right to this 
far-away land and they tried to restrain the frontiersmen 
from pushing beyond the Ohio. But it would have been as 
well to try to hold back the sea at high tide ! The hour for 
expansion had struck and the United States had to begin 
its slow conquest of the land that stretched out in the di- 
rection of the Rocky Mountains — of which the white men 
had never heard — and so on across the continent. 



230 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

At first the way was checkered with defeat. The In- 
dians were loath to give way before the tide of immigra- 
tion ; and the English agents, at work among the savages, 
encouraged them to resist the Americans and supplied 
them with munitions of war. The English wished to keep 
the fur trade for their merchants, and for this reason it was 
to their advantage to have the Indians lords of the soil. 

In the old days the pleasant land south of the Ohio had 
been a favorite hunting and fighting ground for the In- 
dians. Because of the massacres that had taken place 
there, they called this land Kentucky, which means "dark 
and bloody ground." Now once again Kentucky was to 
be a battle-field. Daniel Boone, a famous American 
pioneer, had discovered that it was desirable land and the 
frontier folk were not long in following him into the fertile 
forests. Many of the Indians united in resenting this in- 
vasion and soon the ground was "dark and bloody" on both 
sides of the Ohio. 

Particularly pronounced in this Indian war was the 
treachery and cunning of the Red Men. It was impos- 
sible to tell friend from foe, since the blackest-hearted 
enemy was loudest in his protestations of friendship. A 
story is told of a raid made by some twenty-five Wyandot 
and Delaware Indians upon a little settlement that had 
sprung up near where Marietta, Ohio, now stands. The 
settlers had treated the Indians with much kindness and 
had never wronged any of the red race. For several 
months the savages had come and gone, accepting the hos- 
pitality offered them by the white men with all apparent 
friendship. But in the twilight of a January evening the 
Indians crossed the frozen Muskingum and silently ap- 
proached the unprotected homes of the settlers. When 
they entered the cabins the women, who were busy frying 
meat for supper, kindly offered food to their uninvited 
guests. But once within the houses the Indians dropped 



THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION 231 

the pretense of friendliness and shot or tomahawked men, 
women, and children. 

Such outrages as this roused the United States authori- 
ties into sending General Harmar against the savages. 
He was no match, however, for the Indian chiefs. Blue 
Jacket and Little Turtle, who outwitted him and destroyed 
his troops. 

In 1791 General St. Clair was selected to put down the 
Indian insurrection; but he was old and weak and pos- 
sessed of none of the qualities — except personal bravery — 
that make a great general. The troops that he led were 
mostly untrained men who enlisted for the reward of two 
dollars a month, which was the usual rate of pay for sol- 
diers in the army ! Washington, who never forgot the bit- 
terness of Braddock's defeat, warned St. Clair of the 
necessity for guarding against surprise ; yet that unhappy 
general led his men into the first trap that the Indians laid 
for them. 

On a dark November morning, when the snow lay thick 
in the forests, the United States troops were surrounded 
by an almost invisible foe. The musketry fire of the In- 
dians poured upon the panic-stricken Americans from 
every side and when the smoke of battle hung like a cur- 
tain between the white men and their tormentors, the In- 
dians closed in upon them, shooting down the troops *'as 
hunters slaughter a herd of standing buffalo." No one 
ever knew the number of the Indians. The white men 
who survived could only say that they had seen little except 
smoke; but once or twice the cloud lifted and a glimpse 
was caught of a terrible figure flitting through the gloom — 
an Indian streaked with war-paint and smeared with oil 
and grime, the feathers of a hawk and eagle braided in 
his coarse hair. This was Chief Little Turtle, who led 
the Indians to the attack. 

The army was completely routed, at least one-half being 



232 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

killed or wounded. St. Clair was powerless to check the 
ignominious flight of the remnant of his troops. When 
Washington heard of this defeat he was very angry. For 
once his calm dignity forsook him and he burst out in 
scathing abuse against St. Clair. " *You know how the 
Indians fight us. Beware of a surprise!^ He went off 
with that, my last warning, ringing in his ears," said the 
President. "And yet he has suffered that army to be cut 
to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise — 
the very thing I guarded him against! How can he an- 
swer to his country?" But when the excitement of the 
moment had passed, Washington's fine sense of justice 
prevailed and he saw to it that St. Clair was mercifully 
treated, for although he had failed as a general his hon- 
orable character and personal courage were bej^ond 
reproach. 

General Anthony Wayne, in command of three thou- 
sand men, was sent in 1794 to parley with the Indians. 
Wayne was usually known as "Mad Anthony," so daring 
had been the courage he had shown during the Revolution. 
The Indians had their own name for him — "The Chief who 
Never Sleeps," because his bravery was coupled with a 
prudence that meant eternal watchfulness. He did not 
intend to be surprised by the wily enemy. 

Wayne's instructions were to bring about a friendly un- 
derstanding with the Indians, if such a thing were possible ; 
but they refused to listen to any terms of peace that did 
not acknowledge the Ohio River as the boundary between 
them and the United States. There was nothing for it, 
therefore, but to resort once again to the sword. The 
Americans attacked and defeated the savages, driving 
them from their hiding-places near the Maumee River by 
a famous bayonet-charge which was followed up by the 
burning of several Indian settlements. These prompt 
measures left the Red Men so weakened that they were 



THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION 233 

glad to make terms with Wayne; and a peace was ar- 
ranged which lasted for eighteen years. 

Fighting with the Indians in these bloody wars there 
had been a white man, named William Wells. When a 
boy of twelve he had been stolen by the JNIiamis, and had 
grown up among them like any other young warrior. His 
Indian name was Black Snake and he was married to a 
sister of the Chief Little Turtle. Fighting by the side 
of his brother-in-law, the great war-chief, he had slain 
many a United States soldier with his own hand. But 
suddenly dim memories of his childhood came back to him 
and he was possessed by a longing to return to his own 
people. He gave himself up to Wayne, who received him 
with much favor and made him chief of his scouts. It is 
said that Wells parted from Little Turtle on friendly 
terms, and it is certain that when the campaign was over 
he was joined by his Indian v/ife and half-breed children. 

There were other white men fighting with the Indians 
who had not the excuse of having grown up with them. 
Wayne was disgusted to find that there were Canadians 
fighting on the side of the Red Men in the battle of the 
Maumee, and when the Americans came generally to know 
that British subjects were siding with the savages, indigna- 
tion waxed so strong that a new war with Great Britain 
was threatened. Already public sentiment had been 
aroused by the illegal seizure of some American vessels 
by British cruisers. Washington, however, averted 
trouble by sending John Jay to England to conclude a 
treaty which provided that the debts due to British mer- 
chants at the opening of the Revolution should be paid by 
the United States and that Britain should cease to inter- 
fere in the affairs of the Indians northwest of the United 
States frontier and that they should surrender every ves- 
tige of claim to the forts north of the Ohio. 

"Jay's Treaty" was not popular in America. It was 



234 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

positively exasperating to the French, who were engaged 
in war with England and thought that the United States 
was in honor bound to help them against Great Britain. 
American citizens had been keenly interested in the prog- 
ress of the French Revolution and Washington's policy 
of strict neutrality had turned the feelings of many of his 
countrymen against him. He was accused of base in- 
gratitude to France for the timely help rendered to the 
United States in 1781 ; but Washington was no w^eather- 
cock to be affected by every wind of public opinion. He 
knew that to go to war with Great Britain at this period, 
before the States had had time to recover from the Revolu- 
tion, might prove fatal to the youthful republic. He 
therefore wisely kept his country free from alliances with 
either of the contending nations. 

Washington was President of the United States through 
two terms of office : that is through the first eight years of 
constitutional government. But he declined to serve a 
third term and in September, 1796, he issued a farewell 
address to his countrymen and in the following March 
retired from office. After a hotly contested election, John 
Adams was chosen to be the second President of the 
United States, with Thomas Jefferson for Vice-Presi- 
dent. 

For three years after his withdrawal from public life, 
Washington lived quietly at Mount Vernon. There he 
died, on December 14, 1799. He was mourned by the 
whole nation, although the service he had rendered to 
America could hardly be reckoned at that time. It takes 
a long perspective of history to judge of a man's true 
greatness, and although the Americans of his own day 
loved and reverenced Washington, the present generation 
is in a better position than they were to appreciate his 
splendid qualities, both as a man and as a patriot. He it 



THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION 235 

was, more than any other one man, who helped the 
United States to strive toward an ideal, so that 

"When Freedom from her mountain height 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night, 
And set the stars of glory there." 



CHAPTER XLII 

"the old order changeth, yielding place to the 

new" 

JOHN ADAMS, the second President of the United 
States, was no new figure in the forefront of 
American affairs. He had been one of the chief 
agitators against the Stamp Act in 1765. Later he be- 
came an important member of the Continental Congress 
and he was the first to advocate the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, although it was written by Thomas Jefferson. 
He was chosen as one of the commissioners to settle the 
terms of peace with the English, after the Revolutionary 
War; and he was the first minister to be sent to Great 
Britain by the United States. 

As a president, Adams lacked the dignity that had dis- 
tinguished Washington. He possessed an irritable tem- 
per and in spite of his intense desire for his country's good, 
he was not above personal bitterness. The opposition that 
he met with from his old friend Jefferson, now leader of 
the rival party, made him quarrelsome and seriously ag- 
gravated the difficultes of his administration. 

At the very beginning of his presidency, Adams was 
confronted by a grave problem in the relationship between 
the United States and France. In 1789 the French Revo- 
lutionists had succeeded in overthrowing their monarchy 
and in establishing a new form of government called the 
Directory. It was the displeasure of this body that Wash- 
ington had roused by refusing to make war on Great 
Britain. In consequence of their resentment the French 
declined to receive a United States minister. 

Now Adams, wishing to avoid further unpleasantness, 

236 



"THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" 237 

dispatched three envoys to Paris. Their mission was to 
establish friendly relations between France and the United 
States ; but they were told by the French foreign minister, 
Talleyrand, that in order to secure peace the Americans 
must make a "loan" to the French government and pay 
secret bribes to the members of the Directory! The en- 
voys stoutly held out against this absurd demand, one of 
them declaring, with sinister meaning, that the Americans 
were willing to pay "millions for defense, but not one cent 
for tribute." 

When it was known in America that France had tried 
to extort money from the United States, a great revulsion 
of feeling took place. Men who up to this time had worn 
the tri-colored cockade, as an emblem of sympathy with 
the French Revolutionists, now turned in anger from the 
grasping government. It was not likely that the Ameri- 
cans would pay tribute to France, when they had refused 
it to their own mother country and had very nearly lost 
their all to uphold their freedom! Like wild-fire a mar- 
tial spirit spread through the land. Men greeted one an- 
other with the famous phrase, "Millions for defense, but 
not one cent for tribute"; and Hail, Columbia, then a new 
song, was sung from the seaboard towns to the far scat- 
tered log houses of the West: 

"Immortal patriots rise once more, 
Defend your rights, defend your shore ; 
Let no rude foe with impious hand 
Invade the shrine where sacred lies 
Of toil and blood the well-earned prize. 
While off 'ring peace, sincere and just, 
In heav'n we place a manly trust 
That truth and justice will prevail. 
And ev*ry scheme of bondage fail." 

Ships were built, an army was raised and the United 
States made ready for war with France. 



238 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

In 1789 a desperate fight took place between a French 
frigate and an American frigate, resulting in the surrender 
of the French ship; but there was no fighting on land. 
France had not looked for war; she was startled by the 
commotion that her attempt to extort money from the 
United States had raised; so it happened that the Direc- 
tory gave the American minister at The Hague to under- 
stand that any minister sent by the United States to Paris 
would be received "with the respect due to the representa- 
tive of a free and independent nation." Later, when Na- 
poleon Bonaparte had overthrown the French Directory 
and was ruling in its stead, a satisfactory agreement was 
made between the United States and France, and the 
shadow of war lifted once again from the fair face of 
America. 

Adams was nominated by the Federalists for a second 
term of office, but he was not re-elected. His party had 
done a great work for tlie country. They had made the 
national government strong and bound the bankrupt and 
disorderly States into a firm union ; but the time had come 
when of itself "the old order changeth, yielding place to 
the new." There was a growing feeling in America that 
the Federal party followed too closely the English form 
of government. The people of the young republic wanted 
something more individual, something more expressive of 
their faith in the equality of men than the Federal leaders 
gave them. What was then called the Republican party 
seemed to be the instrument ready to interpret the will of 
tlie people; so the presidential campaign of 1800 became 
a party battle of great interest. It resulted in the Re- 
publican candidate, Thomas Jefferson, being elected Presi- 
dent, with Aaron Burr for Vice-President. The name of 
this party was soon changed to the Democratic party. 

Jefferson and Adams had been warm friends, but their 



"THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" 239 

advocacy of different parties set them against each other 
in a way that was particularly hard for Adams to bear. 
During the last years of their lives, however, the two men 
became friendly again and, by a curious coincidence, they 
both died on the 4<th of Juty, 1826, which chanced to be 
the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration 
of Independence. 

Like Washington, Jefferson was a Virginian by birth 
and a gentleman by nature. His mind was one of the 
boldest and most original of his time and his whole desire 
was to further the interests of the United States and to up- 
hold the ideals set forth in the Constitution. As a proof 
of his belief that the President was "one of the people" 
and in no way a being superior or "divine right," it is said 
that Thomas Jefferson insisted upon going to the cere- 
monies of his inauguration on foot, instead of driving 
through the streets in a coach as his predecessors had done. 
His policy was broadly stated in the words of his inaugural 
address: "Equal and exact justice for all men, of what- 
ever state or persuasion, religious or political ; peace, com- 
merce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling 
alliances with none." 

In accordance with his high principles, Jefferson made 
a great effort to have slavery and slave trade abolished. 
He was the moving spirit in separating church and state, 
and in securing permanent religious freedom to the people 
of the United States. To him was due the change of 
money from pounds, shillings, and pence to the simple 
decimal system of dollars, dimes, and cents. 

During President Jefferson's administration the United 
States was at peace with all the great powers, but war 
was raging in Europe and the sea-trade of England and 
France suffered severely. In order to prevent capture 
by enemy vessels, foreign merchants sent their goods in 



240 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

American ships. This gave a great impetus to the com- 
merce of the United States. The spice of danger that 
neutral seamen had to accept along with a French or Eng- 
lish cargo appealed to the Americans, whose sailors were 
especially noted for tlieir hravery. A problem that had 
to be solved by them was how to protect their ships from 
robbery. 

The little Mohammedan states on the southern coast of 
tlie IMediterranean looked upon ships from Christian 
countries as their rightful prey. The nations of nortliern 
Europe paid them a yearly tribute for letting tlieir ships 
alone, but vessels from the United States were not exempt 
from the attention of the pirates. The Americans were 
obliged to ransom from slavery some of their sailors cap- 
tured by tlie Dey of Algiers, but because they refused to 
give "presents" to the Pasha of Tripoli that disappointed 
prince broke into open war. 

The daring of the Americans in their war with Tripoli 
has never been forgotten. In many actions they boarded 
the pirate ships and fought with swords and bayonets in 
hand-to-hand encounters. The frigate Philadelphia ran 
on the rocks and was captured by the Tripolitans, and its 
crew reduced to slavery. But on a dark night Lieutenant 
Decatur put into the harbor, in a small two-masted coast- 
ing vessel, boarded tlie frigate and set her afire. He then 
escaped with his men by rowing his little boat through a 
storm of shell hurled from the enemy's batteries. 

It took four years of blockade and war to bring the ob- 
stinate ruler of Tripoli to terms. At last, in 1805, he 
signed a treaty of peace. 

Seven years later Algiers openly declared war against 
the United States, captured American vessels and made 
slaves of the sailors. But once more Stephen Decatur 
went to the rescue. This time he entered the Mediter- 



"THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" 241 

ranean as commodore of a squadron, captured the chief 
vessels of the Dey, forced him to release his prisoners and 
to board an American ship to sign a treaty. After that 
the United States had no more trouble with the pirate 
powers. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

CONCERNING DOLLY MADISON 

IN November, 1800, while Adams was President of the 
lUnited States, Congress opened its sittings at 
Washington. The federal city was then very crude. 
Its houses were often separated by a mile or two of forest, 
and the roads were sometimes impassable. After seeing 
the city, Tom Moore, the Irish poet, spoke of it jestingly as 

"The famed metropolis where fancy sees 
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees. 
Which traveling fools and gazeteers adorn 
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn." 

The third President, Jefferson, was a widower, and as 
both his daughters were married and lived far from Wash- 
ington, he was constrained to turn for help in his enter- 
taining to the wife of his intimate friend, James IMadison, 
whom he had made Secretary of State. Mrs. Madison's 
influence on the social life of the United States was so 
great and her charming personality played such an im- 
portant part during several administrations that it is worth 
our while to know something about her early life. 

She was born on the 20th of JMay, 1768, while her mother 
was visiting in North Carolina. But her people were 
Quakers belonging to Virginia and it was there on her 
father's plantation, in Hanover County, that she spent her 
childhood. John Payne and his wife called the child 
Dorothea, and brought her up in the wholesome Quaker 
way. The "thee" and "thou" of their speech must have 

242 



CONCERNING DOLLY MADISON 243 

come very prettily from her baby tongue. From her 
mother, the httle girl inherited dancing eyes, a lovely com- 
plexion, and curly dark hair, along with a heart as bhthe 
as a May morning. 

Dorothea, or Dolly, as she was usually called, learned 
her letters at a school near her home, and played at keep- 
ing-house with her sisters in the sweet hedge corners of 
the Virginia lanes. Her little gowns reached down to 
her toes and were cut after the severe fashion approved by 
the Quakers. Out of doors she sometimes wore long 
gloves half-way up her arms, and on her head a wide, 
shady bonnet. While she was still a child the Revolution- 
ary War broke out in the colonies and her father, in spite 
of his love of peace, went to be a captain in the Continental 
Army. It was an anxious time then for young and old. 
Even the little children seemed to take an interest in the 
fortunes of the country. The smallest tots played at sol- 
diers, and all the little girls were kept busy making cloth- 
ing for men in the army. 

After the war, in 1783, the Paynes moved to Phila- 
delphia; for the spirit of the South was unfriendly toward 
Quakers, and John Payne wished to be among people of 
his own faith, and where his family could have congenial 
companionship. 

Dolly became very popular in Philadelphia; indeed, in 
a quiet way, she was a belle ; but the cost of supporting a 
large family in the city proved too heavy a burden for her 
father, who had lost a great deal of property through the 
war. The failure of a business venture, which he had 
undertaken to mend his fortunes, had much to do with his 
early death ; but before he died he was happy in seeing his 
daughter Dolly married to a young Quaker lawyer, James 
Todd. 

This marriage was probably not a matter of much senti- 
ment; although the two years of married life with her 



244 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Quaker husband seem to have been very happy ones for 
Dolly. The wedding was a somber affair and took place 
in the Friends' Meeting-house. To the bride, who had 
an innate love of color, the drabness of the ceremony may 
have been more apparent than was its dignity. She had 
been born with a liking for harmless display that was, per- 
haps, inherited from her mother's family. 

Dolly Todd was a practical young woman and she made 
a capable helpmate to her husband, and a loving mother 
to her little son, John Payne Todd. A second child had 
just been born to her, when a terrible scourge of yellow 
fever robbed her of both husband and baby. She herself 
was stricken with the fever and went down to the gates of 
death in sorrow and suffering. But her buoyant nature 
was too sane to be overwhelmed long by the shadow of 
loss. She got well and with her son went to live in her 
mother's house. While there she met James Madison. 

"The great little Madison," as he has been called, was a 
serious-minded man of forty-three. Already he had won 
fame as a member of the Constitutional Convention and 
of Congress. His early manhood had been burdened with 
responsibility, so that he had little time for love-making. 
But the beautiful, laughter-loving Dolly seemed to him, 
what she was, the very essence of sweetness. ISIistress 
Dolly, on her side, admired Madison's scholarly worth and 
real greatness ; and when he paid her his addresses — as the 
pretty phrase was then — she consented to marry him. 

In September, 1794, the wedding took place at the house 
of ^Irs. Todd's sister, in Harwood, Virginia. This sister 
was the wife of George Steptoe Washington, a nephew of 
the President. 

Whatever brightness was lacking at Dolly's first wed- 
ding was amply made up for now. The marriage cere- 
mony was performed in accordance with the rites of the 
Church of England, and lavish Virginia hospitality de- 



CONCERNING DOLLY MADISON 245 

manded a ball and a feast to celebrate the happy occasion. 
Leaving the guests to finish the dancing and merry-mak- 
ing, the bride and her husband set out on their wedding 
journey. They traveled in their own coach for a hundred 
and fifty miles, to Montpelier, the Madison estate in Vir- 
ginia, and there spent several restful weeks before they 
were forced to return to take up the season's duties in 
Philadelphia. 

Philadelphia, you remember, was the temporary seat of 
government, and it had taken on quite a cosmopolitan air ; 
for the French Revolution had driven many distinguished 
foreigners out of their own country, and all who came to 
the United States gravitated toward the Quaker city. 
Mrs. Madison thoroughly enjoyed the social life of Phila- 
delphia. The Assemblies and all the important functions 
were new to this girl, who had been brought up in a Quaker 
household. The question of what gown to wear to this 
dance, or to that reception, was an affair of such moment 
that it vastly amused Mistress Dolly. Her husband, how- 
ever, often grew weary of so much dancing and feasting, 
and at one time threatened to withdraw from public life; 
but tactful Dolly wisely influenced him against a decision 
that would have spoiled a great career. 

When the seat of govermnent was transferred to Wash- 
ington and President Jefferson reigned in the White 
House, the Madisons lived not far from the Executive 
Mansion. "Queen Dolly," as she was laughingly called, 
soon became a social leader. We are told that "the offer 
of her snuff-box was a balm to wounded feelings, and her 
hearty laugh raised a breeze which blew away many a 
diplomatic awkwardness." 

Dress, in Dolly Madison's time, was anything but beau- 
tiful, and if you were to study one of her portraits you 
would come to the conclusion that she must indeed have 
been a woman of great charm to be so lovely in spite of 



246 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the fashions! It was the day of spreading hoopskirts, of 
very high-heeled shoes, and of hair frizzed into unnatural 
curls, or piled in fantastic pyramids, or even cut off and 
replaced by an elaborate wig. Mistress Dolly kept very 
close to the fashions; yet her delightful personality dom- 
inated her dress and left her unspoiled. Perhaps the se- 
cret of her success as a hostess and as one of the most lov- 
able women in American history is that whatever Dolly 
Madison had to do, she did with all her heart. Her social 
duties were never permitted to encroach upon her home 
life. She was a splendid housekeeper, and the comfort 
of her son, John Todd, and of her husband was her first 
care. A loyal and loving wife, Dolly Madison had her 
husband's career always at heart, and her influence had 
almost as much to do with his prominence in national af- 
fairs as did his own undoubted ability. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE AND THE TREASON 
OF AARON BURR 

DURING the last years of the eighteenth century 
the old love of discovery still drew men on to- 
ward the west, still fed fancy and sharpened 
imagination until no obstacle was too great to be overcome, 
no distance too far to be traveled cheerfully by the path- 
finders of history. 

We already have spoken of the opening up of the region 
in the vicinity of the Ohio River. After the purchase of 
the Indian title to this land, people began pouring over 
the mountains to find homes in the country beyond. Their 
goods they carried on pack-horses until they came to the 
river ; and there they built large flat boats and floated them- 
selves and their belongings downstream to choose a suit- 
able place for a settlement. When they had landed and 
unloaded, these brave pioneers broke up their boats and 
used the planks to build cabins, sure of their ability to 
wrest a living from the region they had chosen as their own. 

The faith of these people was wonderful. There they 
were, shut off from the rest of the world by distance that 
is unthinkable to us in our days of express trains and motor 
cars. They were entirely dependent on their own efforts 
to tame the savage nature of the land, to make the wilder- 
ness "blossom like the rose" and yield them food and 
raiment. But their faith and thrift were rewarded. 
Nothing was wasted by the settlers and if necessity was 
ever "the mother of invention," it was among these care- 

247 



248 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ful people, who turned even the husks of Indian corn to 
various uses, making ropes of them, horse-collars, brooms, 
and chair bottoms. Sheep were raised for wool, flax was 
grown so that the women might spin and weave. Spin- 
ning-wheels and looms the settlers made for themselves, as 
they made their chairs and tables, their dressers and their 
bedsteads ; for such heavy things could not be brought over 
the bridle-paths of the mountains. They tanned their 
OAvn leather and made their own shoes ; they made barrels 
and beehives by sawing hollow trees into sections. Their 
ingenuity was endless. One had to be a Jack-of-all-trades 
if he was to make a good citizen of the great Northwest 
Territory, for this was the name under which all that ex- 
panse of wilderness country had been made known by an 
Act of the United States Congress. 

This Northwest Territory included all the States now 
enclosed between the Mississippi, the Ohio, Pennsylvania 
and the Great Lakes. The Act that created it a territory 
also provided for making three states from it, and wisely 
forbade that slavery should ever be permitted wdthin its 
borders. Thus it happened that the Ohio River came to 
be not only a physical but a political dividing line in 
America. 

So well did the settlers in this new region prosper, that 
their produce soon came to be too heav^'- to be packed 
across the mountains. It could be sold only by floating it 
thousands of miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers 
to the markets of New Orleans in Louisiana. 

These long journeys were made in very large flat-boats, 
which could be rowed skilfully down the river but could 
not be brought back against the current. The men who 
handled them were obliged to get back to their starting- 
point as best they could, usually by taking passage on ships 
sailing from New Orleans to Virginia or Maryland and 
then making their way on foot, or horseback, over the 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 249 

mountains to Pittsburgh, from where the Ohio could be 
made to carry them to their homes again. 

Before long it became necessary to trade upriver as well 
as down, so the barge and the keel-boat came into use. 
These were boats with sharpened bows which could be 
forced upstream by the use of poles, oars, and sails in 
turn, or else towed by the boat-men walking along the 
shore. It was a very primitive form of navigation, toil- 
some and weary; four months was the time taken up by 
a voyage from New Orleans to Pittsburgh, and the danger 
from skulking Indians and highwaymen, who infested the 
banks of the rivers, was a serious consideration. But 
rough as it was, this river traffic was to be the means of 
opening a matter of first importance to the United States. 

By right of discovery, Louisiana originally belonged to 
France. In 1762, however, after the English had taken 
Canada, France ceded Louisiana to Spain. Now the 
rapid spreading of the United States toward the west made 
the Spanish vmeasy ; they feared that their American pos- 
sessions were in peril of being overrun by the encroaching 
States. Driven by this fear, Spain showed a most un- 
friendly spirit toward the United States; and then quite 
suddenly the authorities at New Orleans refused to the 
traders of the Northwest Territory the privilege of using 
the Mississippi as a waterway for their boats. This act 
roused much consternation in the States, for if Ohio, Ken- 
tucky and Illinois could not find some means of getting 
their produce to the ocean, their trade was at an end. 

The people begged the United States Government to 
drive the Spaniards away from the Mississippi and so end 
the argument by force; but Jefferson was too wise to use 
violence, except as a last resource. He sought to make a 
peaceful arrangement of the difficulty by buying enough 
of Louisiana to give the United States a way through to 
the sea. Before any such project could be agreed upon, 



250 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Napoleon Bonaparte stepped in and secured Louisiana 
from Spain in exchange for Tuscany. Napoleon was fast 
getting control of Europe and he conceived the brilliant 
idea of rebuilding the power of France in America. 

As soon as it was known that Louisiana had changed 
owners, Jefferson commissioned James IMonroe and 
Robert R. Livingston to open negotiations with Napoleon 
in regard to a right of way for the United States along 
the Mississippi. By the time the commissioners reached 
France, Napoleon had made up his mind that he did not 
particularly want Louisiana after all. He had been made 
to understand that Great Britain was all-powerful at sea 
and he saw that he could not hope to hold possession in 
far America when he could not defend himself against 
British sea power in home waters. France was in sore 
straits for money and the quick mind of the French Gen- 
eral seized the opportunity of replenishing his coffers and 
at the same time of getting rid of a burden that he might 
not be strong enough to hold. He therefore surprised the 
American commissioners by offering to sell to the United 
States the entire territory of Louisiana. 

JMonroe and Livingston had no authority to make so 
large a purchase, but the opportunity of adding thus mag- 
nificently to the United States was too unique to be al- 
lowed to escape. They assumed the responsibility of the 
purchase and a treaty was made out by which they bought 
(for fifteen million dollars) territory covering one million 
square miles; for French Louisiana included in whole or 
in part the present States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis- 
souri, Iowa, INIinnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, 
North Dakota, South Dakota, jMontana, Wyoming and 
Oklahoma. After they had signed the treaty, the com- 
missioners stood up and shook hands. "We have lived 
long," said Livingston, "but this is the noblest work of 



i 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 251 

our lives. From this day the United States becomes a 
first-class power." 

When the French who lived in New Orleans and the 
country round about, heard that they had been transferred 
to the United States without their consent, they were not 
pleased. Their mood of grumbling dissatisfaction was 
such that an excuse was all that was needed to make them 
break into open rebellion. In the Northwest Territory 
there also was some murmuring of discontent, for a few 
restless persons were eager to separate themselves from the 
Government, which seemed so far away behind the moun- 
tains, and establish an independent rule of their own. A 
third disquieting faction in America at this time was 
Texas, where the Spanish still held sway and nursed their 
dislike and fear of the United States. All these disturb- 
ing elements taken together offered an opportunity of mis- 
chief to an ambitious man, whose name was Aaron Burr. 

We have spoken of him before simply as the Vice-Presi- 
dent under Jefferson, but his position was peculiar, for he 
had received the same number of votes as Jefferson him- 
self and at one time there was a question as to whether he 
or Jefferson had been elected President of the United 
States. It was believed, however, that Burr had not been 
honest in his political dealings ; certain publications on the 
subject, supposed to have been written by Alexander 
Hamilton, appeared in one of the journals of the day and 
turned the tide of public opinion in Jefferson's favor. 
Burr accused Hamilton of having slandered him; and 
because Hamilton would neither accept nor deny the 
charge, he challenged him to a duel. Hamilton accepted 
the challenge, met Burr, and was killed. 

This event caused a great sensation all through the 
United States, for Hamilton was well beloved and re- 
spected by his countrymen. Unusual honors were paid to 



252 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

his memory; while the name of Burr was spoken with 
loathing. Burr fled to South Carolina, where he hid for 
a time, but as soon as he thought it was safe he returned 
and completed his term as Vice-President. In Washing- 
ton he found himself a despised man ; for even then, duel- 
ling had come to be regarded as murder in the United 
States and not as a gentlemanly accomplishment. Em- 
bittered and vengeful. Burr looked about for some way 
of creating a new name for himself. He thought he saw 
his way to becoming a second Napoleon by raising a force 
to conquer Texas and establishing there a republic which, 
in time, should embrace the western States and Louisiana. 
With tliis great plot in mind. Burr enlisted soldiers and 
got munitions of war together; but his purpose was dis- 
covered and proclaimed by the President and he was tried 
for treason. Sufficient evidence could not be collected to 
convict him, however, so he was allowed to go free. But 
he presented a sorry figure to the world, a man bankrupt 
in reputation and shunned by his fellows. He had been 
endowed with every grace of manner and with unusual op- 
portunities for good, but deliberately he chose dishonor and 
his history bears pitiful witness to the folly of his choice. 
Aaron Burr lived out his life despised by his fellows, and 
when death came to him, he was poor and alone. 



CHAPTER XLV 

WITH LEWIS AND CLARK FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 
TO THE PACIFIC 

**How canst thou walk in these streets, who hast trod the green 

turf of the prairies? 
How canst thou breathe in this air, who hast breathed the sweet 

air of the mountains?" 

THE Columbia, a ship from Boston commanded by- 
Captain Gray, made a leisurely trip to China in 
1791. Sailing along the Pacific coast of America, 
she stopped now and then at an Indian encampment while 
the captain bought furs from the natives to take to the 
markets in Canton. 

One day Captain Gray espied the mouth of a great river 
over which the surf broke so violently that he dared not 
enter it. But by carefully noting the latitude in his log, 
he was able to return a few months later and run his ship 
boldly through the breakers into a river whose calm sur- 
face had never borne anything larger than an Indian 
canoe. 

For fourteen miles the captain sailed upstream, and 
when he finally dropped anchor his vessel floated quietly 
on the bosom of a river wonderful in its extent and beauty. 
This stately stream Captain Gray named the Columbia, 
in honor of his ship. 

The discovery of the Columbia River had made thought- 
ful Americans hope that the Missouri, which was known to 
flow into the Mississippi from the west, might somewhere 
join the Columbia and so make a practicable water route 
for commerce with the Pacific. For twenty years Jeffer- 

263 



254 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

son had longed for the time when the United States should 
reach from ocean to ocean. He had tried, in vain, to per- 
suade learned men and societies to organize an expedition 
to cross the continent. As soon as he was made President 
he turned to Congress for help ; and in 1803 a sum of money 
was voted for the purpose of sending an exploring party 
from the mouth of the Missouri to the Pacific. 

Two young men from Virginia were put in charge 
of the expedition. They were Meriwether Lewis and 
William Clark. Early in May, 1804, they set out from 
St. Louis, then a frontier town of log cahins, and worked 
their way up the IMissouri to the site of the present city 
of Bismarck, North Dakota. There they passed the win- 
ter in a village of Mandan Indians, learning many help- 
ful secrets of camp life and gaining considerable informa- 
tion in regard to the region they intended to penetrate. 

The Red JMen told the explorers that after "manj^ days' 
journey toward the setting sun" they would come to a 
gorge, "wondrous deep and wide," into which the whole 
river came plunging with a roar like thunder. They even 
spoke of a solitary eagle which had built her nest in a dead 
Cottonwood tree among the mists of the cataract. 

As soon as the spring sunshine had melted the snow. 
Captain Lewis sent home all but the strongest and bravest 
of his men. He and his followers then started on the next 
stage of their adventure, knowing that danger from hostile 
Indians might be added to their other trials. As they 
went on the river grew more and more difficult to navigate. 
It was no longer "The Big Muddy" — which is the Indian 
meaning of Missouri — but a stream of narrow windings. 
Sometimes the canoes had to be di-agged slowly along with 
the aid of tow-lines, or pushed through dangerous rapids 
with poles. 

It was hard work, but toward evening the travelers 
would halt and build big camp-fires to frighten away the 



WITH LEWIS AND CLARK 255 

prowling creatures of the night and to roast the great 
joints of venison and bear's meat, brought in by the hunt- 
ers of the party. Over their supper the explorers would 
discuss the events of the day and make their plans for the 
morrow; then at dark they would unroll their blankets, 
stretch themselves on the ground and sleep. At dawn the 
camp would be astir again and another day of adventure 
begin. 

Lewis and Clark usually walked before the boats to 
reconnoiter the country. They met no Indians, although 
they often saw traces of their encampments. Whenever 
they climbed a hill to gain a wider view, they saw thou- 
sands upon thousands of buffalo feeding on the prairies; 
and on one unforgettable day, the 20th of ^lay, 1805, they 
saw on the horizon a long line of blue mountains, cloud- 
wreathed and crowned with snow — the great chain of the 
Rockies ! 

On a day in June, Captain Lewis, happening to be 
alone, saw a thin cloud-like mist rising out of the distant 
plain, which he at once guessed to be the Great Fall of 
which the Indians had spoken. A few hours' hard walk- 
ing beside a long stretch of rapids brought him within 
sound of the roaring water. A few more hours and he 
was standing beside the gorge into which the INIissouri falls 
with a headlong plunge, now to disappear into a canon 
a thousand feet below, only to break away again from the 
dark gulf, to sparkle into the light of day and go foaming 
in a series of cascades. 

Lewis was the first white man to see that mighty broil 
of waters, and for a long time he stood lost in wonder at 
the sight which, in his journal, he called "sublime." When 
at last he turned to rejoin his party, he saw standing, half 
shrouded in the mist, a dead cottonwood tree, bearing in 
its gaunt branches an eagle's nest just as the Indians had 
described it. 



256 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Beautiful as it was, the Great Fall made difficulties for 
the boats, which had to be carried eighteen miles overland 
before they could be launched once more. This was the 
beginning of the real hardships of the expedition ; for the 
party soon entered the awful canon, which they named 
"The Gate of the Rocky IMountains," and after that their 
boats were of no more use. Horses and guides must be 
found or the journey come to an abrupt end. 

Lewis left his companions in camp and set out alone in 
search of Indians who could help them on their way. He 
scaled the mountains on foot and after manj^ weary days 
reached the highest source of the JNIissouri, which there, 
three thousand miles from its mouth, is no more than a 
tiny brook. Passing on over the watershed, he came upon 
a trickling stream that ran not toward the Atlantic but 
toward the Pacific ocean. It was one of the sources of 
the Columbia River; although Lewis did not know this 
until later. He followed its tortuous course, however, un- 
til at last he came to a village of Shoshones or Snake In- 
dians. At first these people would not believe that the 
white man had come alone over the mountains, but Lewis 
persuaded some of them to go back with him to the camp, 
and when they saw that he told the truth, they consented 
to furnish horses and act as guides to the exploring party. 

Once again the expedition was in motion ; but the going 
was so hard that it took a month to get across the moun- 
tains, where there was no supply of food, as there had been 
on the plains, and the men suffered acutely from hunger. 

When the Indians finally brought them to a stream that 
they called the Kooskooskee (one of the southern tribu- 
taries of the Columbia) and told them that they might em- 
bark with safety, Lewis and his followers were four hun- 
dred miles from the place where they had left their boats. 
But, undaunted in spirit, in spite of their half-starved and 



WITH LEWIS AND CLARK 257 

ragged condition, they built themselves bark canoes and 
started on the descent of the river. 

In three days this stream led into a wider one, which 
they called the Lewis River. Pushing on, they came to 
the point where the Columbia falls in a series of mad leaps 
through the Cascade Mountains. Safely through this 
dangerous region, the explorers found that the stream was 
broadening out, and along its banks were camped tribes 
of fishing Indians — people who lived almost wholly on 
salmon and so pitched their tents near their food supply. 
Fortunately these red folk were friendly, and the white 
men were happy to be again in a land of i)lenty. 

Soon there began to appear signs of their nearness to 
the coast. INIany of the Indians had guns which they had 
bought from white traders ; the great river was affected by 
the ocean tides; and at last the voyagers saw "the waves 
like small mountains rolling out in the sea." They had 
reached the Pacific Ocean. To be sure, they had found 
no waterway from the Mississippi to the Pacific; but they 
had made other discoveries of the first importance, and by 
their explorations they had strengthened the claim of the 
United States to the vast region that came to be known 
as the "Oregon Country." Oregon was the Indian name 
for the Columbia River. 

The wonders and riches of this marvelous country soon 
became familiar to trappers and hunters, who were at- 
tracted by the stories of big game ; and so began the march 
of civilization toward the Pacific. 

The greatest factor in the settling of the West was to 
be the use of steam as a means of getting from place to 
place. In 1804 a steam engine had been invented in 
Wales, although no passenger trains were run in America 
until 1830. The first successful steamboat was built by 
Robert Fulton, in the United States in 1807, and in time 



258 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

it played a mighty part in the development of the country. 
The train and the steamship are well known to us ; they 
have a poetry and attraction of their own that is wonderful 
and full of romance ; but theirs is the story of to-da5^ At 
almost any moment we can see the fii-e-breathing monster 
that feeds on miles and eats up distance, the mammoth 
engine that is now lord of the plains ; we can see the river 
boats that link up the commerce of the cities, and the great 
ocean steamers that carry on the business of the world. 
These things we know ; but we like to go back in imagina- 
tion to stand on a hill- top beside Lewis and Clark and gaze 
with them off over the west, to see the buffalo feeding on 
the plains, to watch a far-away cloud of dust that may hide 
the march of some roving Indians, and to look with de- 
light upon the long line of snow-topped mountains that 
form the range of the Rockies. Now the buffalo and the 
Indians have almost disappeared; yet the hills are un- 
changed. The wonderful West of to-day is not very dif- 
ferent from the West that the explorers knew; it is still 
"God's Country," in its freedom and breadth, in its beauty 
and splendid promise. 



CHAPTER XL VI 

WAR BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 

ALTHOUGH the United States was several times 
tempted to take part in the conflict con\ailsing 
Europe, the wisdom of her leaders combined to 
keep the young republic free from war. We have seen 
that the Americans actually profited by the madness of 
their neighbors over the sea, for it gave neutral merchant 
ships an opportunity for trade otherwise they would not 
have had. But during Jefferson's second term as Presi- 
dent a new phase of the European situation upset the 
peace of the United States. 

The old enemies, Great Britain and France, were driven 
to desperate modes of warfare. In 1806 England an- 
nounced that all the coasts of France and her allies were 
in a state of blockade, and that any vessels attempting to 
trade with the blockaded countries were liable to be seized. 
It was thought that by cutting off her food supply, France 
might be starved into submission. Napoleon, who had 
nearly all the Continent in alliance with France, promptly 
replied by declaring that he would seize any ships entering 
or leaving the ports of Great Britain. 

The blockade effectually closed Europe to American 
ships; and this aroused indignation in the United States, 
where the living of a great many people had come to 
depend upon foreign trade. The American merchants 
asked themselves why they should be made to suffer loss 
because of a war that was not their own. Ruin stared 
them in the face, and they demanded help from their gov- 

259 



260 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ernment. Congress tried to help them by the Embargo 
Act of 1807, one of the most futile acts of which that wise 
body has ever been guilty. "Very well," said Congress, 
in effect, to Europe, "if you won't play fair, we won't play 
at all," and prohibited all commerce with foreign countries. 
This was done in the belief that Great Britain and France 
would repent of their folly and repeal their decrees as 
soon as they found themselves cut off from the articles with 
which the United States had supplied them; but Europe 
existed without American trade and for four years com- 
merce was practically at a standstill. 

Weeds grew up on the idle wharves of New York and 
Philadelphia, tar-barrels were hung over the tops of the 
masts of idle ships to keep the wood from rotting, and tens 
of thousands of people were thrown out of work. There 
was no market for the cotton and tobacco of the South, 
nor for the grain and timber of the North ; so the taste of 
injustice rankled in the minds of the Americans and made 
them dream of war. The greatest grievance was against 
Great Britain because it was chiefly her cruisers that had 
enforced the blockade, for the British were far more pow- 
erful at sea than the French. 

A second cause for hostile feeling against Great Britain 
was her system of impressing sailors from American mer- 
chant vessels to serve on her men-of-war. By the English 
law a man who is born a British subject is always a British 
subject, no matter where he may choose to live. But 
Americans consider that a man belongs to the country in 
which he makes himself a home, provided he swears allegi- 
ance to that government. An Englishman who settles in 
the United States is regarded as an American citizen, if 
he wishes to become one, and as nothing else. Not having 
enough sailors to man her ships of war England was forced 
to compel merchant sailors to serve in her nav^^ To avoid 
being pressed into naval service, many sailors deserted and 



UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 261 

went to America. The British authorities, therefore, 
claimed the right to search American vessels for these de- 
serters and for men who, as British subjects by birth, could 
be made to serve their country. 

It was not always easy to tell an Englishman from an 
American, and perhaps the British captains were more 
eager to get sailors than they were to examine their papers, 
for it often happened that mistakes were made. The 
United States claimed that six thousand men, to whom 
Great Britain had no right whatever, were carried off to 
fight under the Union Jack. When one poor fellow was 
ordered to get his clothes and go on board a British man- 
of-war, he was so loath to obey that he went below and 
chopped off his left hand. When he appeared on deck 
again, holding up the bleeding stump, he was told that 
he might stay where he was. Sometimes an American 
ship resisted search and then there was trouble and blood- 
shed; so that gradually there came to be clamorous cry in 
the United States for "Free trade and sailors' rights." 

This was the state of things in 1808, when James Madi- 
son was elected to succeed Jefferson as President. He 
was not the best man to take charge of American affairs 
at this critical period; for although he was honest and 
faithful, he was not strong enough to defy public opinion 
and take the consequences, as Washington had done and 
as Jefferson had been capable of doing. But he did his 
best and was ably helped and abetted by his wife. 

Mrs. Madison had now come into her kingdom. At the 
state ball held on the night of her husband's inauguration, 
no one was so wonderfully dressed as "Queen Dolly." 
Her gown was of amber velvet, adorned with pearls, and 
on her head she wore a satin turban trimmed with a gor- 
geous plume. She really made a very splendid great lady, 
and every American was justly proud of her. During 
her official reign at the White House, Washington life 



262 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

waxed more brilliant than it had ever been before. The 
social vortex always had Dolly Madison for its glowing 
center. 

In strange contrast to this polished society of the cap- 
ital city were the untamed elements of the country. 

In 1811 an Indian war broke out that furnished the 
American people with a culminating grievance against 
Great Britain, for it was whispered that British agents 
furnished arms to the Indians and encouraged them to op- 
pose the settlers of the Northwest. 

The leaders of this insurrection were two of three 
brothers born at the same time. They were of the Shaw- 
nee tribe. One was named Tecumseh; he was a warrior 
of no mean skill. The other, who was called "The 
Prophet," worked upon the superstitions of his fellows by 
his hocus-pocus with a string of sacred beans, and by fall- 
ing into trances and pretending to speak by inspiration. 
These crafty brothers deserted their own people and set- 
tled near the Wabash River, where the fame of the 
Prophet's visions brought them a great following of In- 
dians from various tribes. To these credulous disciples, 
Tecumseh preached that the whole of America belonged 
to the Red Men, to all the tribes in common, and that the 
Indians who had sold land to the white men had done what 
they had no right to do. His ambition was to form a 
confederacy of all the Indian tribes, in order to force the 
United States Government to give up the lands north of 
the Ohio River. So great was his hold over the Red Men 
that his conspiracy might have succeeded if he had been 
left alone ; but his fanatical brother was impatient and en- 
couraged the Indians to commit numerous outrages, which 
brought a speedy judgment upon them. 

In October Tecumseh went south to enlist fresh recruits 
for his enterprise; and while he was away General Har- 
rison, the Governor of Indiana, led nine hundred men 



UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 263 

against the Prophet and his followers at Tippecanoe. 
Some of the principal chiefs met him with protestations 
of friendship, and it was arranged that a powwow should 
be held the next morning to discuss terms of peace. Har- 
rison and his men, therefore, encamped for the night ; but 
they suspected treachery and so were not surprised when 
the Indians attacked them in the small hours before dawn. 
The frontiersmen who formed Harrison's force were on 
the alert, their fires were put out, and fighting went for- 
ward in the dark. Harrison encouraged his men by quiet 
example, fighting side by side with them. The Prophet 
stood at a safe distance on a hill-top and chanted a war 
song in a harsh voice. Inspired by his incantations the 
savages fought more openly than was their wont. But 
soon after daybreak, the troops made a charge which drove 
the Indians from the field. The battle was followed by 
the burning of the Prophet's town and the submission of 
most of the tribes in the neighborhood. When Tecumseh 
returned he found the town in ruins and his confederacy 
dissolved. 

By June, 1812, the feeling against Great Britain had 
risen to such a pitch of excitement in the United States 
that Madison let himself be coerced into making a declara- 
tion of war. The reasons that he gave Congress for the 
necessity of so important a step were: That Great 
Britain had urged the Indians to attack the whites; that 
she had ruined American trade ; and that she had impressed 
American seamen to serve on British ships. 

These grounds of complaint might have been got over 
by a little wise diplomacy; but sane judgment seems to 
have been clouded by bitterness. Certainly the war of 
1812 was a most regrettable mistake, for it resulted in 
three years of fighting with little gain on either side. 

From the point of view of Great Britain, this war with 
the United States was a heavy embarrassment. The crisis 



264 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the European conflict was at hand, and already British 
strength was taxed to the utmost. Every available ship 
was needed to maintain the blockade of the French ports ; 
so it was with untold resentment that Great Britain had to 
prepare for attack from her o^vn kinsmen. 

On the other hand the United States could ill afford war. 
More time was needed to develop American resources and 
to pay off the debt with which the Revolution had bur- 
dened the country ; also the United States was ridiculously 
unprepared for war. Great Britain possessed one thou- 
sand ships of war to America's twenty ! But all these con- 
siderations were as nothing. 

The first efforts of the Americans in the war met with 
disaster. General Hull was sent, with a force of two 
thousand five hundred men, to invade Canada ; but scarcely 
had he got on to Canadian soil when he was driven back. 
In Detroit his forces were besieged by an inferior number 
of British troops and forced to surrender. 

In the meantime some Canadians and Indians fell upon 
and captured Fort Mackinaw, before its commander so 
much as knew that war had been declared. 

These British successes removed the last restraint upon 
the Indian tribes of the upper country and all the savages 
of the interior turned against the Americans and threw in 
their lot with the victors. This Indian alliance did not, 
however, add greatly to British strength. In the fkst 
place, it meant that the British commissaries had to feed 
about fourteen thousand extra mouths, and the exhaustion 
of supplies due to this cause more than made up for any 
help received from the Red Men in war. In the second 
place, the outrageous methods of fighting that the savages 
employed reflected much discredit upon their friends. To 
Tecumseh's credit it is said that he tried to discourage the 
Indians in their acts of frightful violence. This interest- 
ing chief was made a brigadier-general in the British army 



UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 265 

and he undoubtedly served Great Britain faithfully and 
well. 

After Mackinaw had fallen, the little garrison at Dear- 
born, where Chicago now stands, -was made to leave the 
fort ; and as the Americans marched out they were set up- 
on b}'^ Indians and nearly all murdered. The garrisons 
at Fort Wajme and at Fort Harrison were besieged by 
hordes of savages ; but they managed to hold on until help 
reached them. 

The American people were terribly disheartened by 
their inglorious failures. A flurried government tried 
General Hull by court-martial and sentenced him to death, 
because of his weakness in giving up Detroit. His honor- 
able services, rendered during the Revolution, were for- 
tunately remembered, however, and he was pardoned. 
But some one had to be blamed for the disappointing state 
of things, and there were many people ready to hold Presi- 
dent Madison responsible for every disaster. They spoke 
of "Madison's War," quite ignoring the fact that Madison 
had been forced into the war by the opinion of his country 
and against his own judgment. The harassed President 
was called upon to bear such injustice and heavy anxiety 
that he must have felt truly how "uneasy lies the head that 
wears a crown" of office. 



CHAPTER XL VII 

SEA POWER IN THE VTAR OF 1812 

THREE thousand miles of ocean separated the 
United States from England, and the sea was 
well known to be the home of the mighty British 
Navy, To carry enough men across the water to invade 
the British Isles was an impossibility for the small Ameri- 
can fleet. Canada was, therefore, the only portion of 
British territory where the United States stood any chance 
of gaining ground, but we have already heard that aggres- 
sion there failed. 

In the thirty years that had elapsed since the War of 
Independence, the Americans had forgotten most of the 
fighting knowledge they had gained. To pay off the na- 
tional debt, economy had been so strictly practised in the 
War Department that the nation was not properly 
equipped for any kind of campaign. The haphazard 
army was commanded by generals who had won their 
spurs during the Revolution, men too old to learn new 
methods of fighting and too far removed from the past to 
profit by former experience. 

The disasters that the United States met with in Canada 
and in the region north of the Ohio were the fruits of the 
ignorant self-complacency of these generals, and of the 
entire unfitness of the army. This failure of American 
plans changed the character of the war from a campaign 
of aggression to one of defense, for the pressing question 
was how to keep the British out of the United States. 
The seacoast towns were in great fear of attack by British 

266 



SEA POWER IN THE WAR OF 1812 267 

men-of-war and the country was saved from discourage- 
ment only by the surprising achievements of the United 
States navy. 

No one had expected much help from the handful of 
ships that made up the American fleet. The War Party 
had not thought it worth while to build new ships, so sure 
were they that American vessels would simply be captured 
by the enemy. But there were several naval officers who 
held different views on the subject. 

The leaders of the navy happened to be comparatively 
young. They were scientific seamen and skilled ofl^cers 
and they were filled with that same quality of courageous 
faith in themselves and their cause that had inspired Jolin 
Paul Jones at the time of the Revolution. These men — 
Decatur, Hull, Perry, Macdonough, JMorris and others — 
decided to go out and harass the enemy's ships as much 
as possible. They knew that they stood no chance in battle 
with the Power whose "home is on the deep," but they 
hoped to effect some result by annoying British shipping. 
To this end the frigates and sloops of war belonging to the 
United States navy put to sea together. They were well 
provisioned and were independent of either coal or oil, for 
in 1812 the motive power which sped the ships was simply 
the wind; and this impartial element filled American and 
British sails alike, or left the ships of friend and foe be- 
calmed, according to its own caprice. 

The fact that the main strength of the British na\y was 
still at grips with the sea power of Napoleon was greatly 
in favor of the United States. The force that England 
could spare to carry on war in American waters was small 
and compelled to keep together, because if the ships at- 
tempted to scatter they were in danger of being captured 
singly by the United States fleet. 

The Americans won their first outstanding success when 
the frigate Constitution was chased by a squadron of 



268 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

British ships and managed to escape. She was on her wav 
from the Chesapeake to Xew York when the chase began. 
The wind was so hght at the time that neither pursuer nor 
pursued could make much headway. They were forced 
to tow their ships by sending rowboats ahead, or to pull 
them forward by means of kedge-anchors. Tlie British 
set most of tlieir boats to towing one frigate, in order to 
overtake the CoJistifution and cripple her, so that she might 
be captured. But tlie officers and crew of the American 
sliip proved that they came of the same Yiking stock as 
their foes. Their Yankee ingenuity served them too. for 
after three davs and nights of continuous toil, and bv usins: 
every miaginable means for getting ahead at sea, they 
managed to lose sight of their pursuers, although at one 
time they had been within range of British cannon. 

Tlie Constitution was not content with the glory of sav- 
ing her timbers from a superior enemy, for later she cap- 
tured tlie frigate Gucrricrc, one of the British vessels that 
had chased the Constitution, and after a desperate fight 
succeeded in disabling and capturing her. 

Xews of the taking of the Gucnicre was greeted witli 
incredulous joy in the United States, where the possibility 
of such a victory had seemed too much to expect. When, 
soon after, the sloop of war Wasp beat the British sloop 
Frolic, the American people had an even greater pride in 
their little na-vy. Still other victories followed, mitil the 
interested world began to wonder if Great Britain had at 
last found a sea power to rival her o\^^l greatness. 

One of the most picturesque triumphs for the Americans 
was the capture of the Macedonian by the frigate United 
States, under the command of Stephen Decatur. 

It is said that a yomig officer was sent to Washington 
with an official report of Decatur's victory. The mes- 
senger arrived in the capital while a large public assembly 
was in progress, and was escorted right into tlie ballroom. 



SEA POWER IN THE WAR OF 1812 269 

where he laid the ensign of the Macedonian at the feet of 
Dolly jMadison. The guests wept and cheered with en- 
thusiasm and the young officer's mother and sister, who 
happened to he present, proudly embraced him, overjoyed 
at his safe escape from the famous sea battle. 

To aid their gallant little fleet, the United States Gov- 
ernment ordered private vessels to be fitted out to scour 
the seas and plague British ships whenever they had a 
chance. These privateers, the fastest of which were known 
as "Baltimore clippers," captured or destroyed about six- 
teen hundred enemy vessels ! 

For the Constitution, the ship which had won the first 
sea duel, the Americans felt a particular affection. They 
f ondl/ christened her Old Ironsides, a nickname which the 
frigate bravely supported by capturing another man-of- 
war, the Java, before the close of the year. 

In twelve months the American sailors scored more suc- 
cesses against the British than French seamen had gained 
in twelve years. Five of their men-of-war had been cap- 
tured by the United States navy before the British ac- 
tually realized what was happening. Shocked by the 
unexpected disgrace that threatened their supremacy, 
furious sea-captains swore to wipe out the ridiculous little 
American fleet, and British ships cruised off the American 
coasts, searching unceasingly for opportunities for prov- 
ing to the world that Britain's glory was untarnished. 

The Americans had been inspired by their victories to 
invent a new type of frigate which, in strengih of frame 
and general fighting power, far excelled any British ship 
of the same class. Such a vessel was the Chesapeake. 
She was commanded by Captain Lawrence, a man of bril- 
liant courage who, as captain of the Hornet had destroyed 
the British brig-of-war Peacock. His country looked for 
him to accomplish great things with the Chesapeake. 

Others than Americans had a keen interest in this new 



270 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ship, and in Jime. 1813. Captain Broke, of the British ship 
Shuunon. which Isiy outside Boston harbor, decided to chal- 
lenge Captain Lawrence to come out and do battle with 
him. He sent the American captain a letter, which for 
bhmt honesty and fair dealing was worthy of the best tra- 
ditions of the Britisli navy. "As the Chesapeake appears 
now ready for sea," he wrote, "I request that you will do 
me the favor to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship." 
He tlien went on to explain the exact armament of the 
Shannon, the nmnber of her crew, the fact that he was 
short of provisions and water and that he had sent away 
his second ship so that the terms of the duel might be fair. 

Proudly the United States frigate accepted tlie chal- 
lenge of so worthy a foe. by sailing gallantly fortli to tight. 
She was a blaze of fluttering colors as she left her moorings 
and a small fleet of pleasure boats followed in her wake. 
The citizens of Boston were so confident that the Chesa- 
peake would be victorious that they got ready a banquet 
in honor of La\\Tence and his oflicers for the same evening. 
But alas for tlie pride of the Americans, who learned that 
day that in spite of the dash and daring of their favorite 
commander, and the superiority of tlieir ship, they were 
still no matcli for British seamen trained in the school of 
X el son. 

The fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon 
lasted just thirteen minutes. It was one of the shortest 
and bravest duels in naval history. Lawrence and Broke 
were men of the same high courage and they sliowed equal 
bravery, but Captain Lawrence was mortally wounded at 
the very first of the encounter and lay lielpless in the steer- 
age of his ship. His men fought like heroes, but the un- 
expected fierceness of the Shannon's fire mowed them down 
like grain. Once, twice the Chesapeake made response to 
the Shannon's guns, but after that the Americans could do 
no more. The two ships (.li-ifted together and Captain 



\ -^. 



vr 



/ 





THEY SAW THE Shannon with the coxqiered Chesapeake, both baiti.e- 

O.RIMEO AND UHXID-STAIXEO. UKARIXi; AWAY TOWAKO HAl.IFAX"" 



SEA POWER IN THE WAR OF 1812 271 

Broke was able to board the Chesapeake and end the 
struggle with a sharp hand-to-hand light. The British 
flag was run up above the Stars and Stripes, although with 
his last breath Captain Lawrence pleaded with his men not 
to give up the ship. "Blow her up, blow her up !" he com- 
manded ; but there were none left to obey. 

The carnage on the two ships was terrible. Two hun- 
dred and fifty-two men were killed and scores more 
womided. To the spectators crowding the pleasure boats 
that had followed the Chesapeake so confidently the en- 
counter must have seemed like a horrible dream. So 
quickly was it over that they could hardly realize what had 
happened when they saw the Shannon with the conquered 
Chesapeake, both battle-grimed and blood-stained, bearing 
away toward Halifax. 

The people of the United States were plunged into 
gloom by the collapse of their newly won naval fame: but 
with characteristic pluck they seized upon the dying words 
of Lawrence : "Don't give up the ship !" and used them for 
a new battle-cry. Alive to their necessity they did their 
best to increase both army and na%y. Other encounters 
between single ships occurred, in which the Americans were 
sometimes victorious but, because of the overwhelming 
British fleet that now was sent over, they more often lost. 

The taking of the Chesapeake restored the confidence of 
Great Britain in her naval supremacy and was really the 
tiu*ning-point m the war. The brave exploits of the tiny 
American naAy, however, had their effect upon history, for 
they helped to secure recognition for American seamen and 
equal rights for them on the ocean. 

The Chesapeake was taken over to England and for 
years it lay berthed beside the Shannon in the jNIedway. 
Then it was sold for old timber and broken up, and to-day 
it stands as a floiu'-mill in Hampshire, peacefully grinding 
English corn. This is, perhaps, a good omen, a sign that 



272 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the world may never be called upon to witness another 
battle between Great Britain and the United States, coun- 
tries now bound together not only by ties of blood and 
speech, but by mutual respect. 

WTien Great Britain and the United States settled their 
difficulties and declared peace, the sailors greeted the end 
of hostilities with enthusiasm, and American bards who. a 
little time before, had been thundering of war and death- 
less hate, tuned their pipings to notes of peace and assured 
their brethren across the sea that they did not think so 
badly of them after all. One song that gained wide popu- 
larity, took the form of a toast: 

"Then here's to us both ! We've fair wind and fair weather. 
Let the star-spangkxi banner in triumph be furled; 
We will splice the old cross and our bunting together 
And ride everv wave and defy all the world." 



CHAPTER XL VIII 

THE ARMY IX THE WAR OF 1812. PEACE CONCLUDED 

WE must now go back and see how the army had 
been employed while the navy was comport- 
ins; itself so bravely. 

After Hull's surrender at Detroit, General Winchester 
was appointed to take charge of the United States troops. 
But Winchester was another Revolutionary veteran and 
the soldiers distrusted his antiquated methods and feared 
that he would lead them to disaster. The xVmerican army 
in the Northwest was made up chiefly of Kentuckians — 
men of unusual courage, but with no intention of throwing 
their lives away simply because their general was incom- 
petent. They boldly declared their right to choose the 
man they would serve, and selected for their leader Wil- 
ham Henry Harrison, who so vigorously had put down the 
Indians at Tippecanoe. The Government had to yield to 
the demand of the soldiers; so Harrison assumed control 
of the army and Winchester was given a command under 
him. 

Poor Winchester was doomed to ill luck. In January, 
1813, he moved some troops north from Fort Defiance, to 
meet Harrison and unite with him in an attack upon the 
British at Maiden, but before he had come up with Gen- 
eral Harrison, he M'as surprised by a party of British and 
Indians at Frenchto^^Tl. His troops were thrown into 
confusion. Driven across the River Raisin, they were 
crowded into a narrow lane and there shot at from both 
sides, mitil, to save any of his men alive, Winchester was 

273 



274 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

forced to surrender to the British general, Proctor — a 
cruel man. who marched away with his mihurt prisoners 
and left the womided to be brutally massacred by his In- 
dian allies. This infiuuy roused the Americans to a new 
energ}' of action and made them tight with more fury tlian 
they had felt before during this cimipaign. 

When General Proctor, with a large force of British 
soldiers, and Indians led by Tecumseh, laid siege to Har- 
rison's army at Fort 3Ieigs. the American force was so 
small that Proctor unmediately demanded the surrender 
of the fort. Harrison staunchly replied: "Tell General 
Proctor that, if he shall take the fort, it will be under cir- 
cumstances that will do him more honor than a thousand 
surrender?." Then reminding one another to "Remember 
the River Raisin I" the Americans held the fort imtil re- 
inforcements arrived and the enemy withdrew, givmg up 
the siege. 

At Fort Stephenson, a young Kentucky officer named 
Croghan did some gallant work. He had only one hmi- 
dred and sixty men and a single six-pound gun to defend 
his weak stockade against the well equipped hosts of Gen- 
eral Proctor. Harrison thought his case so hopeless that 
he ordered Croghiui to abimdon the fort; but the hot- 
headed boy — he was only twenty-one years of agv — pre- 
ferred courage to obedience. He knew the fort was im- 
portant and he made up his mind to hold it. The British 
sent him word tliat he would l>e wise to surrender at once 
and so save his garrison from massacre at the hands of the 
Indians. He replied that when the fort was taken there 
would not be a man left alive in it for the Indians to tor- 
ture. As soon as the tight began. Croghan moved his six- 
pomider about and tired it from ditl'erent places, so that 
the enemy should think he had several gmis. AMien the 
fort, was assaulted at its weakest point, the Kentucky rille- 
men were there to street the British with a deadlv tire. 



THE ARMY IX THE WAR OF 1812 275 

Eut the enemy dashed forward and many of them reached 
the ditch and began to chop down the stockade. Then the 
AjQiericim gun spoke again. It had been double-kiaded 
with grape-shot and shigs (roundisli hmips of metal) and 
concealed where it covered the whole ditch; it was suddenly 
fired and there was hardly a man of the assailing party 
but fell before it. This so discouraged Proctor that he 
retreated with his army the next morning. During the 
night the Americans did not dare to open the gate, but 
they let down water to the womided men outside and 
finally, bv means of a trench, thev ffot the sufferers into 
the fort, dressed their hurts and cared for them generally. 

Both British and Americans built ships in the wilder- 
ness and launched them upon the Great Lakes, which lie 
between the United States and Canada. From the first 
the American operations were in charge of Oliver Hazard 
Perry, an officer only twenty-seven years of age. He had 
brought mechanics over the snow in sleighs all the way 
from Philadelphia to work upon the ships, and late m the 
summer, 1813, he launched several ships on Lake Erie. 
The officers and men of the Lake Fleet were inspired by 
the example of the American ships at sea and determined 
to rival them in glory. Their first object was to gain con- 
trol of Lake Erie in order to make possible a successful 
advance against Canada. 

In the battle of Lake Erie, which was fought in Sep- 
tember, Commodore Perrj' hung up on his vessel the dy- 
ing words of La^vrence: "Don't give up the ship!" His 
flag-ship was riddled and disabled by the enemy, but he 
calmly took do^vn his signal, got into a small boat and, 
standing upright, was rowed to another vessel, while 
British marksmen tried repeatedly to shoot him. Reach- 
ing the ship Xiagara Perry sailed do^vn the British line, 
broke it, and compelled the whole fleet to surrender. He 
then wrote briefly to General Harrison: "We have met 



276 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the enemy, and they are ours — two ships, two brigs, one 
schooner, and one sloop." 

This victory enabled the American army to move for- 
ward. Before setting out toward Canada, General Har- 
rison gave his men some instructions for their behavior that 
are well worth remembering: "Kentuckians," he said, 
"remember the River Raisin! But remember it only while 
victory is suspended. The revenge of a soldier cannot 
be gratified upon a fallen enemy." 

Harrison retook Detroit, crossed into Canada and pur- 
sued Proctor's army, which he came upon near the River 
Thames. The two forces were about equal. The British 
regulars were protected by the river, and Tecimiseh's In- 
dians were covered by a morass. The main American 
army, under Harrison, charged Proctor's troops, while 
Colonel Johnson led a charge against Tecumseh and the 
Indians. The attack was so swift and sharp that both 
lines of the enemy were immediately broken. The British 
threw down their arms in surrender, and Proctor, fearing 
that he would be punished for the horrors he had permitted 
at the River Raisin, escaped in a carriage and hid him- 
self in the woods. The Indians continued to fight des- 
perately until their leader was killed, but then they fled in 
all directions. With the death of Tecumseh the confed- 
eracy of Indian tribes broke up and comparative peace 
reigned on the frontier. 

Harrison had succeeded in invading upper Canada, but 
it was a more difficult matter to invade Canada to the east- 
ward. In the summer of 1814, however, an invasion was 
effected. Fort Erie was taken and early in July the battle 
of Erie was fought and won by the Americans. Perhaps 
the fiercest contest of the war was that fought at Lundy's 
Lane, on the 25th of July. The odds were slightly in 
favor of the British, as three thousand of Wellington's vet- 
erans were opposed to two thousand, six hundred and 



THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812 277 

forty-four Americans, under the command of a young 
Quaker named Jacob Brown. The battle was carried on 
in the darkness of night and both armies fciight with such 
determined bravery that each side claimed the victory. 
The fact is that the battle was a tie and counted no gain 
to either side. The Americans were left in possession of 
the field, but on the arrival of fresh British troops they 
retreated and, before winter set in, retired to the United 
States side of the Niagara. 

Affairs in Europe had, meanwhile, been progressing fa- 
vorably for Great Britain. Napoleon had been over- 
thrown and banished to the Island of Elba, so the British 
had breathing space in which to pay serious attention to 
the war in America. Reinforcements were rushed over 
to Canada, and a fine army, led by Sir George Prevost, 
marched southward on the line of Lake Champlain. A 
sharp battle took place between British and American 
troops at Plattsburg, while at the same time a fight be- 
tween British and American craft was taking place on 
the lake. Because of the skill of Commodore Macdon- 
ough, the Americans gained control of the water, and this 
decided the fate of the battle on land, for Prevost was 
obliged to return hurriedly to Canada. 

The invasion by the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 
more successful, for British ships sailed up the Potomac 
and landed troops in Maryland, only about thirty miles 
from the capital. As the Americans were taken entirely 
by surprise, and had no equal force to send against the in- 
vaders, the British admiral, who had taken an oath that 
he would see the inside of Mrs. Madison's drawing-room, 
was enabled to keep his word. 

A battle was fought, August 24th, at Bladensburg, 
Maryland, which resulted in victory for the British. 

Mrs. Madison, alone in the White House, was far more 
composed than her husband. While she waited for news 



278 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the battle she saw that two trunks were packed wItH 
state papers and sent into a place of safety. She even 
went on with the arrangements for a dinner party that she 
had been expecting to give. Nothing would hurry or 
frighten her. At last, when the British drew so near that 
it was unsafe for "Queen Dolly" to remain in the city, she 
stood upon a chair and cut a valuable picture of George 
Washington out of its frame, saw that it was properly 
bestowed, and then got quietly into her carriage and drove 
out of the capital. 

She scarcely had gone when British troops, led by Ross 
and Cockburn, entered the city. Thej^ were flushed with 
victory. It is said that Cockburn entered the House of 
Representatives and shouted, "Shall this harbor of Yankee 
democracy be burned?" and when his followers answered 
"Aye," the Capitol was set on fire. 

When they reached the White House the officers re- 
galed themselves with the feast that was ready for Mrs. 
Madison's guests. They made merry in the splendid state 
drawing-room, an apartment gay in yellow satin and hair- 
cloth furniture! When they had been sufficiently enter- 
tained they set fire to the mansion and withdrew. 

Other public buildings were soon aflame and "The City 
of Magnificent Distances," as Washington was called, was 
close wrapped in a mantle of smoke. The glare of the 
fire lit up the midnight sky for miles and kindled a hot glow 
of resentment in the hearts of the American people. 

When news reached England of the burning of Wash- 
ington, Cockburn's act was much regretted. In Parlia- 
ment it was spoken of as a piece of vandalism and bitterty 
denounced as "of any enterprise recorded in the annals of 
war, the one which most exasperated the people and least 
weakened the government." 

When the same force that had taken Washington at- 



THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812 279 

tacked Baltimore, by land and water, the vigorous defense 
of the Americans forced the British to retire. 

Both British and Americans were growing weary of this 
stupid war that seemed to be leading nowhere. In the 
United States affairs were becoming particularly desper- 
ate, for there was little hope that the Americans could gain 
any lasting victory against Great Britain ; so all their suf- 
ferings were to no purpose. Peace was the one thing 
wanted by every one; for business was upset, trade at a 
standstill, and the loss to life and property had been fright- 
ful. In August, 1814, according to the desire of the two 
nations, representatives from Great Britain and the United 
States met at Ghent in Belgium to discuss terms of peace. 
On the 24th of December a treaty was concluded which 
declared the war at an end. The questions that had been 
the cause of all the trouble were not discussed but, by mu- 
tual consent, were left to right themselves. 

It is a long way from Belgium to America, and in 1814 
there was no telegraph to flash the magic word "Peace" 
across the world, so it happened that a most bloody battle 
was fought after the war was nominally at an end. 

The southern city of New Orleans was then, as now, a 
great center for the cotton trade, and important because 
of its command of the Mississippi River. A British gen- 
eral. Sir Edward Pakenham, headed an expedition to take 
this city, and about the time when the Commissioners at 
Ghent were rejoicing over the peace they had made, he was 
being rowed with his troops through a storm to the shore 
within a few miles of New Orleans. 

It fell to the lot of the American general, Andrew Jack- 
son, to defend New Orleans. He was a dangerous foe; 
a soldier since his thirteenth year, Jackson was a tried 
leader who loved war for war's sake and who had won the 
imbounded respect and confidence of his men. As an of- 



280 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ficer of the Tennessee militia, he had led a force into Ala- 
bama and put down a rising of the Creek Indians, who had 
been fired by a half-breed chief. Red Eagle, to make war 
upon the whites and upon the Indians of their own tribe 
who were friendly to the United States. When, in April, 
1814, Jackson was put in command of the troops in the 
Southwest, he had a grave situation to face. Florida be- 
longed to Spain, which was at peace with the United States 
although secretly in sympathy with Great Britain. Pen- 
sacola, in Florida, was used as a base of operations for 
British troops in an advance against Mobile. With ex- 
traordinary daring, Jackson marched into Spanish terri- 
tory, captured Pensacola, and routed the British. 

Now, in New Orleans, the American position looked 
hopeless ; for the British host that was advancing upon the 
city was large and made up of regular soldiers. Jackson 
had very few troops at his command; but, undaunted, he 
evolved an army out of the men within his reach. He 
formed companies out of free colored men and took the 
convicts out of prison to make soldiers of them. With 
bales of cotton he built defenses and waited behind them for 
the coming of the enemy. 

Six thousand strong, the British made their attack early 
in the morning of January 8th, 181.5. In brilliant order 
they tried to take Jackson's works bj^ storm, but his prepa- 
rations had been so thorough and his position was so diffi- 
cult to get at that they were thrown back in dreadful 
confusion, with a loss of over two thousand. Sir Edward 
Pakenham rode forward, encouraging his men, but he was 
shot down. Two otiier generals were killed and the attack 
on New Orleans was abandoned. The Americans lost 
only seven men killed and as many wounded! Before the 
British could rally their forces to assault Jackson again, 
the news of peace reached America and penetrated into 



THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812 281 

the remotest parts of the United States. Far and near 
the people rejoiced to have the war at an end; with glad 
hearts they set their faces toward the future and the slow 
work of repairing the ravages made by war. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

THE STEADY GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES. 
MORE STARS FOR THE FLAG 

IN 1814, during the bombardment of Fort ^IcHenry, 
below Baltimore, an American named Francis Scott 
Key went on board one of the British ships. His 
errand was to secure the release of a friend who was a 
prisoner on board the man-of-war, but Key was himself 
detained during the attack on Baltimore. It was a time 
of awful suspense for him. All day and all night the 
British ships bombarded Fort McHenry, while the fort 
replied with a nearly continuous gun fire. Which side 
was victorious? Uncertain of the result of the fearful 
cannonade, Key watched for the dawn with straining eyes 
to see which flag floated over the fort. When he saw that 
the American flag was still there, he was overcome witii 
emotion and, taking an old letter from his pocket, he scrib- 
bled on the back of it the words of The Star-Spangled 
Banner. 

"O, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, 
What so proudly' we hailed at the twihght's last gleaming, 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous 

fight. 
On the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly stream- 
ing? 
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. 
O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" 

282 



GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES 283 

Try to imagine the feelings of the young man, standing 
there amidst the reek and horror of battle writing out the 
question that had been torturing him so long, and picture 
the lift of his heart and head as he wrote the answer to it : 

"On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep, 
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, 
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, 
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? 
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, 
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream ! 
'Tis the star-spangled banner ! O long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave !" 

It is not wonderful poetry, but it caught the spirit of 
relief and thanksgiving that thrilled the heart of every 
patriotic American, and the song was no sooner printed 
than it was sung all over the country. 

The star-spangled banner of which Key wrote had fif- 
teen stripes and as many stars, for the old flag of thirteen 
stripes and thirteen stars had been changed after Vermont 
and Kentucky were added to the United States. In 1818 
it was definitely decided to keep thirteen stripes, to repre- 
sent the original States, but to add a star to the flag when- 
ever a State should be added to the Union. 

At the end of the second war with Great Britain, the 
Americans were in a bad way financially. The revenue of 
the government depended largely upon duties on goods 
imported from abroad, and as hardly any goods had been 
brought into the country for three years, the income of the 
United States had shrunk alarmingly. But so prompt 
was the revival of commerce, and so skilful were the Presi- 
dent and his Congress in righting matters, that when Madi- 
son retired, in 1817, he left affairs in a very satisfactory 
condition. 

One thing the war had done for the United States: it 



284 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had lulled to rest much of the bitterness of party strife; 
so that when James Monroe was elected to succeed Madi- 
son, he was chosen with very little opposition. 

The fifth President of the United States was born in 
1758. He was the fourth chief executive to come from 
Virginia, the proud State so justly called "The Mother 
of Presidents." In 1776, after his graduation at William 
and Mary College, he joined the Revolutionary Army. 
He was minister to France and to England and was Sec- 
retary of State under IMadison. 

Monroe had almost no party feeling himself; his wish 
was to serve wisely, and to be just to all. He was very 
popular, and his administration was called the "Era of 
Good Feeling." In 1820 he was re-elected without any 
opposing candidate, for by that time the Federal party 
was almost extinct and, as yet, no new faction had taken 
its place. 

In the peace that followed the War of 1812, the growth 
of the United States was marvelously rapid. A fresh 
stream of immigrants flowed into America from Europe; 
for the behavior of the Americans in their second war with 
Great Britain had attracted the respectful attention of the 
whole world. 

All the country east of the Mississippi, except what is 
now included in Michigan and Wisconsin, was soon por- 
tioned into States ; and the State of Louisiana, west of the 
INIississippi, was made out of part of the territory pur- 
chased from Napoleon. But for some time the region 
traversed by the Missouri River, that wonderful country 
that Lewis and Clark had explored, lay silent and un- 
profitable, the home only of trappers and sh}^ backwoods- 
men. Gradually, however, settlers from the neighboring 
States were attracted by the wealth and beauty of the Mis- 
souri Territory, and hitching their oxen to great hooded 
emigrant wagons, they followed the blazed trail of the 



GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES 285 

departing pioneers into the new land of promise. Unfor- 
tunately that gracious country was to be a land of bondage 
too, for slave-holders entered it, taking their living prop- 
erty with them. 

The States north of the southern line of Pennsylvania 
had taken measures to free their slaves, but the States south 
of that line had much of their wealth in negroes and thought 
slavery a natural system where black labor was necessary. 

Already there was a feeling of distrust between free 
States and States where slaves were kept, for each divi- 
sion of the Union feared that the other would get control 
of the country. So far the balance had been kept true 
by admitting a northern and a southern State at the same 
time, but in 1818 Missouri wanted to come in alone, and 
Congress had to decide whether the Territory should be 
brought into the Union as a free or a slave-holding State. 

There were people in the North who thought that slav- 
ery should not be permitted in territory acquired at the 
expense of the nation. Others said that the southern 
boundary of Missouri, which was practically an extension 
of the Ohio River line, should be the line separating the 
Louisiana Purchase into free and slave territories. But 
already there were slave owners in Missouri — men resolute 
in upholding what they believed to be their right, and 
strong in political power. If Missouri should be made 
a free State, they asked, what was to become of the slaves 
already there? How could they be set free without loss 
to their masters, or cost to the nation? 

The problem was a difficult one and important, because 
it marked the first contest between Free and Slave States. 
For nearly three years the question was debated; but 
finally, in 1820, it was decided to let Missouri come in as a 
Slave State, but slavery was "forever" prohibited in the re- 
mainder of the territory purchased from France, north of a 
line drawn eastward and westward from the southern 



286 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

boundary of the new State. This arrangement was known 
as the Missouri Compromise and was introduced by Henry 
Clay, one of the most famous orators and political leaders 
of his time. 

By 1821 the "Old Thirteen" had grown to twenty-four. 
The blue corner of the flag was becoming white with stars. 
The wealth and population of the nation was keeping pace 
with the increase of States, for there were over nine and 
a half million people in America — almost three times as 
many people as there were when the Revolutionary War 
was ended; manufactures and commerce prospered, and 
everywhere there was comfort and abundance. 



CHAPTER L 

FROM MONROE TO VAN BUREN. THE RISE OF NEW 
POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE MARCH OF PROGRESS 

ONE of the important events of Monroe's adminis- 
tration was the purchase of Florida from Spain. 
At the time the American Government bought 
Louisiana from France, it was vaguely understood that 
the purchase included West Florida; but against this, the 
Spanish Government had protested, and as long as Spain 
remained an independent nation, the United States did not 
push their claim. In 1810, however, it seemed likely that 
Spain would become a dependence of either France or 
Great Britain and the Americans did not care to have 
either of these powers occupy West Florida, as they might 
interfere with the control of the Mississippi by the United 
States. Madison, consequently, decided to take possession 
of West Florida. Part of it was occupied in 1810 and 
the remainder in 1812. 

The United States next tried to buy East Florida from 
Spain, but that monarchy, though too weak to govern the 
province itself, refused to sell it to the Americans. Smug- 
gling over the boundary line was the cause of much un- 
pleasantness, and the United States authorties had diffi- 
culty in keeping the southern Indians in order without fol- 
lowing them across the frontier. In 1818 General Jack- 
son pursued a hostile band over the border, only to find 
that the savages were getting help from the Spanish settle- 
ments. Prompt^, he captured two of these settlements, 
much to the disgust of some American statesmen, who 

287 



288 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

thought his act unwise in view of the fact that they were 
negotiating for the purchase of Florida. The captured 
forts were, therefore, handed back to Spain; but Jackson's 
raid had served a purpose. It had helped Spain to realize 
that she would best sell what she could not defend, and in 
1819 a treaty was signed, by the terms of which, Spain 
gave up all claim to Florida. In 1821 the purchase was 
completed and General Jackson was sent to receive the 
new province from the Spanish governor. 

Meanwhile people in the United States had been greatly 
interested by the struggles of the Spanish colonies in 
South America to establish themselves as independent re- 
publics. Naturally the symj^athy of the United States 
was all with the people who desired to throw off the old 
yoke of despotism and rule themselves. In March, 1822, 
President TNIonroe advised Congress to send Ministers to 
the South American colonies, as a formal way of recogniz- 
ing them as independent States. 

During the next year the United States took an even 
firmer stand on the side of the South American republics. 
It was feared that an alliance of European nations would 
help Spain to subdue the rebels ; so Monroe sent a message 
to Congress, in which he set forth principles known as 
"The Monroe Doctrine." This famous doctrine was ac- 
tually a declaration of independence for the whole of 
America, and served to immortalize the name of the fifth 
President. The United States, he said, Avould "not in- 
terfere with the internal concerns" of any European 
Power; but that in regard to the continents of North and 
South America, circumstances were different and should 
any European Power attempt at any future time to extend 
its political system to any part of the western hemisphere 
"for the purpose of oppressing" the nations or "controlling 
in any other manner their destiny" the United States would 
interfere. 



FROM MONROE TO VAN BUREN 289 

The doctrine further declared that "the American con- 
tinents, by the free and independent condition which they 
have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be con- 
sidered as subjects for future colonization by any Euro- 
pean Powers." 

These courageous principles were heartily approved of, 
both at home and in Great Britain; for in this matter the 
English speaking peoples thought alike. Monroe's doc- 
trine stands until this day as a fundamental guide to the 
policy of the United States and is recognized as the wisest 
utterance of a wise man. 

Monroe was the last President connected with the Revo- 
lution. He went out of office in 1825, and the "Era of 
Good Feeling" went with him. There were four candi- 
dates clamoring to fill Monroe's place in 1824: Adams, 
Clay, Crawford, and Jackson, but none of these men got 
a sufficient number of electoral votes to make him presi- 
dent and the choice was left to the House of Representa- 
tives, which elected John Quincy Adams. 

Adams had been Secretary of State in Monroe's Cab- 
inet. He was the son of John Adams, the second Presi- 
dent of the United States, and he was an honest, upright 
statesman ; but, like his father, he had not the gift of mak- 
ing friends. His administration was not a success, for he 
was unjustly accused of bribing his way into office. His 
cold manner and his disregard for what people said of him 
made so many enemies that he was not re-elected ; but his 
best public work was done after he quitted the presidency, 
for he sat in the lower house of Congress for seventeen 
years and there his great gifts as an orator had free scope. 
He came to be spoken of as "The old man eloquent"; and 
before his death his countrymen learned to understand and 
to appreciate him. 

In 1829 Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, was made the 
seventh President of the United States. He was a differ- 



290 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ent type of man from any of his predecessors ; they had all 
belonged to families of recognized social importance but 
Jackson rose from the ranks of the common people. He 
was the posthumous son of a poor immigrant from the 
north of Ireland. His mother and brother died from the 
hardships they endured at the time of the Revolutionary 
War, and the boy was thus left alone to make his own way 
in the world. We have ah*eady heard how he succeeded, 
for it was he who held New Orleans against the British 
troops and distinguished himself in Florida. 

Jackson was very popular, for he embodied the Ameri- 
can ideal of the time. His admirers fondly called him 
"Old Hickory," he was so unbending and so violently self- 
willed. He would not tolerate opposition, but turned out 
of government office men opposed to him and appointed 
his own friends in their places. This high-handed pro- 
cedure split the country into two divisions, Jackson men 
and anti-Jackson men. 

Jackson served through two terms of office, and while 
he was President the relations of the Government to other 
nations were carried on with such ability that respect for 
the United States grew with every year. With regard to 
internal affairs, it is safe to say that as long as Jackson 
was in office the country never knew a dull moment. He 
vetoed a great many Acts of Congress, broke down the 
United States Bank, which up to this time had kept the 
public money, and refused to pass measures for the build- 
ing of roads and for like improvements at the expense of 
the general Government, for he believed it was wrong to 
tax the people for such purposes. 

Jackson's followers claimed to take the place of the old 
Democratic-Republican party, and so called themselves 
"Democrats." The men who were opposed to the Presi- 
dent borrowed a name formerly used in England to de- 
scribe the party opposed to the despotic power of the king. 



FROM MONROE TO VAN BUREN 291 

and were called "Whigs." For about twenty years the 
rivalry between these two parties made the principal in- 
terest of American poHtics. This period of history is 
sometimes spoken of as the "Compromise Period," and it 
is remarkable because of the great statesmen who lent it 
luster. 

The Whig leaders were Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and 
Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, two of the greatest 
orators that America has ever known. John C. Calhoun, 
of South Carolina, was another orator of much ability. 
He was on the side of the Democrats. 

In 1836 JMartin Van Buren, of Kinderhook, New York, 
was elected to be eighth President of the United States. 
He followed Jackson's policy ; but not being such a stormy 
man, he went to work in a gentler way. 

The restless vigor of the political conflict was simply an 
indication of the times. Everywhere there was that dis- 
quiet that leads to progress. A "divine discontent" urged 
men forward to fresh endeavor and wider aims. The 
United States throbbed with energ}^ Innumerable roads 
were made; and canals were cut to connect the Great 
Lakes with the Hudson, so that grain which grew in the 
corn lands of the West, thousands of miles away, could 
now be brought to New York at the cost of ten dollars a 
ton where before it had cost a hundred dollars to move it. 
Millions of acres of fertile land which lay in the direction 
of the Pacific were thus made profitable to the country. 



CHAPTER LI 

TEXAS IS ANNEXED BY THE UNITED STATES AND WAR 
WITH MEXICO RESULTS 

VAN BUREN'S administration was remarkable 
only because of a financial panic brought about 
by the President's hostility to the banks. A spe- 
cial session of Congress was able, fortunately, to handle the 
crisis successfully. 

In 1840 the Whigs nominated General William Henry 
Harrison to oppose Van Buren in the Presidential election 
of 1841. Never had there been such wild excitement as 
prevailed during that campaign. Harrison was remem- 
bered as the victor at Tippecanoe and was a popular favor- 
ite. For Vice-President his party nominated John Tyler, 
of Virginia, and their battle-cry came to be "Tippecanoe 
and Tyler too.'* A spiteful leader of the Democratic 
party said that if Harrison were given a log cabin and a 
barrel of cider he would sit down in peace and stop 
troubling the Democrats. This was meant to be an insult, 
to indicate that Harrison was a man of low ideals and a 
commonplace mind; but his followers turned the gibe to 
account by announcing their man to be the log-cabin cider- 
drinking candidate. He stood for the interests of the peo- 
ple, they said, for the humble comforts of the workingman's 
life, while Van Buren "sat in stuffed chairs and ate out 
of gold spoons" and was a friend only to the aristocrats. 

There has been nothing like the campaign that fol- 
lowed; it was a kind of class war, in which the working 
people triumphed. Log cabins were erected on vacant 
lots in every city and town of the North, and on every 

292 



TEXAS IS ANNEXED 293 

village green a cabin appeared to do duty as Whig head- 
quarters. It was a picturesque symbol of all that Ameri- 
cans held dear, with its rough floor, its mud-smeared wall, 
and its latch-string hanging invitingly out. This home 
of the pioneers called to the people, and a barrel of hard 
cider close beside the door added to the persuasiveness of 
the appeal. The voters learned to think of Harrison as 
the poor man's friend; he was the plain American living 
in a log cabin, the simple farmer of South Bend. They 
gave him two hundred and thirty-four electoral votes to 
only sixty given to Van Buren. "Tippecanoe and Tyler 
too" were elected amid passionate enthusiasm. 

Harrison was inaugurated on March 4th, 1841. He 
was sixty-eight years of age, a man sincere and honest in 
his support of true democracy and ready to place himself 
at the service of all who wished to see him. His friends 
thronged to Washington, seeking favors of the President. 
He would deny himself to none of them, and the pressure 
of work proved too heavy for the old man. He caught 
cold and died on the 4th of April, just one month after 
taking office. Then, for the first time in the history of 
the United States, a Vice-President became President 
through the death of the chief executive. 

Tyler was not in sympathy with the views of the Whigs 
in regard to the bank question, and he had the hardihood 
to veto measures passed by Congress; thus he was sus- 
pected of bad faith by the party that had elected him. But 
before his storm}^ term of office expired an important bill 
was passed by the Government. It provided for the an- 
nexation of Texas. 

The Whigs nominated the orator, Henry Clay, for their 
candidate at the eleventh Presidential campaign. The 
Democrats won the election, however, for their man, James 
Knox Polk, of North Carolina. News of Polk's nomina- 
tion was the first item of public interest ever telegraphed in 



294 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the United States, for it happened that the inventor, 
Morse, completed a telegraph line between Washington 
and Baltimore just in time to flash the intelligence from 
one city to the other. Polk strongly approved of annex- 
ing Texas and his party nominated him in preference to 
Van Buren because the latter objected to the new bill. 

At the time when the Spanish- American colonies shook 
off the yoke of Spain and formed themselves into the Re- 
public of Mexico, they invited immigrants to settle in their 
State of Texas. To tempt people to come into this vast 
wilderness region, lying between the Mississippi and the 
Rio Grande, the JNIexican Government promised that no 
taxes need be paid for ten years. Lured by this liberal 
bait, immigrants poured in from the lower Mississippi Val- 
ley (Louisiana) and from the older States. They found 
the climate delightful and the soil so remarkably fertile that 
they wanted Texas for the United States. The American 
Government twice offered to buy it from Mexico, but their 
offers were refused. 

Unfortunately for Mexico the great natural wealth of 
Texas and its very lax form of government attracted the 
worst kind of adventurers, as well as the simple honest 
folk who were intent upon nothing more than making an 
easy living. Murderers, thieves, and desperadoes of every 
sort fled to Texas to escape justice; so the name of Texas 
came to be associated with all that was lawless and un- 
controlled. Within a few years the huge State rebelled 
against the rule of Mexico and after a short and bloody 
conflict the Texans won their independence by defeating 
the Mexican army at San Jacinto, a small village near 
Galveston Bay. This was in April, 1836. 

When the revolt took place there were more Americans 
than people of Spanish blood in Texas and the leader in 
the revolution was a Virginian named Sam Houston. His 
ambition was to hold Texas for slave-owners. The Mexi- 



TEXAS IS ANNEXED 295 

cans had abolished slavery and he saw that the only way to 
gain his end was to sever all connection with Mexico. As 
soon as he had succeeded in this, he was elected President 
of the Republic of Texas. 

Unable to maintain herself as an independent power, 
however, Texas soon asked to be taken into the United 
States. The Southern States favored her admission be- 
cause her interests were so much like their own. Her soil, 
climate, and productions were the same, and she would 
have to be admitted as a Slave State. The North objected 
to the annexation of Texas for this very reason: as a 
stronghold of slave owners she would be a powerful factor 
in the struggle that already was foreshadowed between 
North and South. "We all see," said Daniel Webster, 
"that Texas will be a slave-holding country ; and I frankly 
avow my unwillingness to do anything which shall extend 
the slavery of the African race on this continent or add 
another slave-holding State to the Union." "The South," 
declared the Legislature of Mississippi, speaking of 
slavery, "does not possess a blessing with which the affec- 
tions of her people are so closely entwined, and whose value 
is more highly appreciated." Thus the battle of words 
was fought and the South won, as she usually did at this 
period of her history, and Texas was received into the 
Union in December, 1845. 

Mexico naturally objected to the annexation of Texas; 
she disliked losing such a huge stretch of territory, and 
she felt that her national honor was affronted by the action 
of the United States. But the Mexicans are slow to act 
and they might not have gone to war had they not been 
roused by an immediate cause of hostility that gi^ew out 
of a discussion over the southern boundary of Texas. 

The United States assumed that Texas extended as far 
as the Rio Grande, while the Mexicans contended that it 
stopped at the Nueces River. The wedge-shaped tract of 



296 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

territory between the two rivers was of little use to either 
party, for it consisted of barren prairie land, but from a 
military point of view the Rio Grande offered the strong- 
est line of defense and for this reason Texas wanted her 
boundary fixed on it. To enforce the claim of Texas, the 
Americans sent General Zachary Taylor to occupy the dis- 
puted territory. The Mexicans attacked his troops, and 
so a war between the United States and JNIexico began 
in 1846. 

Taylor's force was not so large as that of the Mexicans, 
but he fought and won the battle of Palo Alto and then 
attacked and defeated the enemy at Resaca de la Palma 
and drove them across the Rio Grande. In May he 
crossed the river and took possession of the City of Ma- 
tamoros. The Mexicans showed no signs of wishing to 
make peace; so Taylor marched forward to Monterej^ 
He had received reinforcements, but even so his men were 
greatly outnumbered. There were about six thousand 
Americans and about ten thousand Mexicans. ISIon- 
terey was strongly fortified, but the Americans 
boldly stormed the walls and forced General Am- 
pudia, the INIexican commander, to surrender; although 
they allowed him to withdraw with his troops. The vic- 
tory was not won without heavy loss on both sides. For 
some time it was touch-and-go with the United States' 
troops, in spite of their gallant self-confidence, for they 
were mainly volunteers and this was their first experience 
of fighting. When they finally won their way into the city 
they may well have exulted : 

"We were not many — we who stood 
Before the iron sleet that day ; 
Yet many a gallant spirit would 
Give half his years if he but could 
Have with us been at Monterey. 



TEXAS IS ANNEXED 297 

Our banners on those turrets wave, 

And there our evening bugles play : 

Where orange-boughs above their grave 

Keep green the memory of the brave 

Who fought and fell at Monterey." ^ 

General Taylor now felt that he was strong enough to 
advance farther into Mexico ; but before he had gone very 
far instructions reached him requesting that he send back 
a great part of his troops to assist General Scott, who was 
planning to enter Mexico by way of Vera Cruz. Badly 
weakened, Taylor was obliged to abandon his campaign 
and stand on the defensive. He took up a strong position 
at Buena Vista, where he was attacked by the unscrupu- 
lous Mexican commander, Santa Anna, with a force of 
twenty thousand men. 

"On come his solid infantry, line marching after line ; 
Lo ! their great standards in the sun like sheets of silver 

shine ; 
With thousands upon thousands — yea, with more than 

three to one — 
Their forests of bright bayonets fierce-flashing in the 

sun." 

All day long the battle raged, but when night came it saw 
the Mexicans defeated and retreating under the cover of 
darkness. This stand of the courageous little American 
army at Buena Vista was the most brilliant victory of the 
war. It gave General Taylor well deserved fame and later 
brought about his election to the Presidency. 

Popular opinion was divided in the United States in 
regard to the Mexican War. In the North, thinking men 
had seen it coming with alarm and many of them held that 
it was unjust and disgraceful. Among these was a young 
lawyer from Illinois, a tall, lanky youth with a homely, 



298 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

purposeful face. This was Abraham Lincoln, the man 
who was to gain a place in the hearts of his countrymen 
second only to that held by George Washington. Lincoln 
entered Congress while the war was in progress and in his 
first speech condemned the action that the Government had 
taken in regard to Mexico. 

In the South, however, the people did not stop to ask 
whether the war was worthy of their support. A sister 
State was in trouble, and they volunteered in multitudes 
for the fighting. Four States alone were willing to fur- 
nish fifty thousand men, and in one district the rush was 
so great that it was feared there would be too few whites 
left at home to keep the negroes in order. 

The war was a famous training school for many officers 
whose names came to be familiar in those dark after-years 
when the cloud of Civil War enveloped the United States. 
General Lee and General Grant gained their first experi- 
ence of fighting during the trouble with Mexico. Al- 
though it was spoken of as "a little war," it was packed 
with far-reaching consequences. 



CHAPTER LII 

MORE RICH TERRITORY FOR THE UNITED STATES. 
PEACE WITH MEXICO 

"Blow, bojs, blow, for Californio 
For there's shining gold and 

wealth untold 
On the sunny Sacramento." 

THE Mexican War had been begun for the purpose 
of securing to Texas the territory between the Rio 
Grande and the Nueces Rivers, but more im- 
portant interests soon became involved in the struggle. 
The United States looked with longing toward the thinly- 
settled northern portion of Mexico and upon romantic 
California. 

The Americans particularly wished to own the port of 
San Francisco, because the whale-fishery in the Pacific had 
grown to be a very profitable industiy to the United States. 
It employed about twenty thousand sailors and two hun- 
dred thousand tons of shipping, and would have employed 
more had it not been that most of the ports in the north 
Pacific were difficult to navigate on account of sand-bars 
that blocked their mouths ; San Francisco alone was open 
and free. 

President Polk was determined to secure California, not 
only because the United States had immediate use for it, 
but lest the British should discover that it would be a fine 
thing to have a Pacific seaport and so demand California 
from Mexico in payment of money lent to that Govern- 
ment. 

209 



300 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The United States offered to buy the coveted region 
from the Mexicans, but they refused to sell ; so shortly after 
war began Colonel Kearney was sent to conquer Xew 
Mexico and California. He took New Mexico without 
any difficulty, in August, 1846, and a civil government was 
quietly established there under the control of the United 
States. 

California was taken from Mexico before Colonel 
Kearney could get there. It happened in this way: 
There was an uprising of the American settlers, who de- 
manded independence from Mexico and tried to establish 
a government now known as the '^Bear Flag Republic" 
because a bear was the emblem on their standard. This 
little revolution was turned to account by Colonel John C. 
Fremont, who had been sent into the province by the 
United States as the leader of an exploring expedition. 
He was aided by American naval officers on the coast, who 
raised the Stars and Stripes on shore. After some fight- 
ing California passed into American hands and was 
definitely annexed at the close of the Mexican War. 

The South wished to bring California into the Union 
as a Slave State, but a curious accident saved her from 
that destiny. An old settler, named James Marshall, was 
helping to build a sawmill on one of the tributaries of the 
Sacramento River. The saws were to be moved by a 
water-wheel, but when the wheel was finished and the 
water turned on, it was found that the trench made to 
carry off the water was too small. To make it larger, 
water was rushed through it in such a volume that a great 
quantity of mud and gravel was washed away. This 
debris massed at the end of the trench. Marshall stood 
looking at it one day in January, 1848, when his eyes were 
suddenly attracted by some glittering particles in the mud. 
He picked them out and examined them. They were 



MORE RICH TERRITORY 301 

gold! Gold was everywhere — in the rocks, in the river 
sands, and in the soil. 

Marshall and his employer. Captain Sutter, tried to 
keep the wonderful discovery secret for a time; but some- 
how the great news leaked out and spread from the little 
mountain sawmill to the seacoast and from the seacoast 
to the four quarters of the world. El Dorado, so long 
dreamed of, was found at last I The splendid fairy story 
had come true ! 

In far distant cities, tired men toiHng at office desks 
heard the wonderful news with shining eyes. They threw 
down their pens and started for California. Ministers, 
doctors, day-laborers, men from every walk in Hfe, thought 
it a shame to be poor when gold was waiting to be picked 
up ; so they all set off to the Pacific Slope to gather in their 
fortunes. Ships heavily loaded with passengers sailed 
around Cape Horn. Long trains of emigrants in ox-carts 
wended their way across the almost unknown region be- 
tween the Mississippi River and the Far West. Hun- 
dreds died by the way, and long after that march for gold 
the path of the caravans could be traced by the bleached 
bones of animals and men, and by abandoned wagons. 

Before the j^ear was out California had gained an addi- 
tion of eighty thousand to her population. They came 
from all countries, from sleepy English villages and from 
the crowded cities of China, all drawn by the great magnet 
of fabulous wealth. Society was quite demoralized. In 
California the natives were as intent as the rest of the world 
on the one thing — gold; so there were few people to look 
after the wants of the newcomers and the prices asked for 
the commonest necessities were absurdly high. But no 
one grudged paying a dollar each for onions, or a hundred 
dollars for a shovel when he could pick up five thousand, 
ten thousand, or fifteen thousand dollars in a few days. 



302 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Every miner was earning such sums as he had never 
seen before. Life in CaUfornia was a wild romance. 
The men, for there were no women, Hved in hastily put up 
shanties, or in tents. All restraining influences of society 
were absent; and yet in that smelting pot of lawlessness 
and greed there were courageously borne suffering and 
rough fellowship. In those days of money-getting and 
discomfort, men learned many things. Some of them re- 
alized that wealth is not the greatest thing in the world; 
many of them would have been glad to exchange all their 
gold-dust for a sight of their far-away families. 

The cosmopolitan population brought together by the 
gold fever in California saved it from being a Slave State. 
A purely southern institution could not flourish, nor could 
there be any question of man owning man, in that land 
where all men met as equals. 

It was to the interest of the Americans to end the Mexi- 
can War as speedily as possible after New Mexico and 
California came under the control of the United States, 
for they needed peace to develop the vast new territory 
that they had gained so easily. 

General Taylor's victories were brilliant, but not de- 
cisive. The JMexicans were not subdued by them; so it 
was to strike at the very heart of their pride that General 
Scott's expedition was planned. He landed and took Vera 
Cruz, as a first step in a carefully thought out scheme for 
capturing the capital city of Mexico. JMarching into the 
interior, Scott met with Santa Anna, who was fresh from 
his encounter with Tajdor at Buena Vista, and on the 
18th of April, 1847, engaged him in the battle of Cerro 
Gordo. The Mexican army was defeated and made to 
retreat ; but peace still seemed to be a long way off. 

The forward movement of the American troops was 
beset with danger. They were in the country of their 
enemy and the ^lexicans were rallying in great numbers. 



MORE RICH TERRITORY 303 

But Scott and his ten thousand men pushed on until they 
arrived in the neighborhood of the capital. On the 20th 
of August they won the battles of Contreras and Chu- 
rubusco. Early in September they defeated the Mexi- 
cans at Molino del Rey, and a few daj^s later took the 
fortress of Chapultepec. The city of Mexico was at- 
tacked on September 13th, and the following day it was 
surrendered by the Mexicans and occupied by General 
Scott. 

The taking of the capital brought the war to a close, 
although the Mexicans were so loath to admit they were 
beaten that it was not until February, 1848, that an agree- 
ment of peace was formally signed. A clear title to Texas 
as far as the Rio Grande was then granted to the Ameri- 
cans, and their claim to New Mexico and upper California 
was acknowledged by the Mexicans in return for fifteen 
million dollars paid them by the United States Govern- 
ment. Later, in 1853, the Americans bought from the 
Mexicans a strip of land between the Rio Grande and the 
Colorado River. This, with the other land acquired from 
Mexico, including Texas, added about eight hundred and 
seventy-five thousand square miles to the area of the 
.United States. 

The new territory was so rich in gold and silver mines 
as to add enormously to the world's wealth, and so rich in 
pasture lands as to make cattle-raising an immense inter- 
est. The variety of the climate that this western country 
brought within the bounds of the United States made it 
possible to grow tropical fruits in great quantities; and, 
most important of all, the acquisition of California opened 
American trade with the Pacific, profoundly affecting the 
commerce of the globe. 

During Polk's administration the line marking off the 
northwestern frontier of the United States from Canada 
was determined upon. There had been a great dispute 



304 



STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



as to whether the British or the Americans had first claim 
to the Oregon country. This was settled in 1846, when 
the boundary was definitely fixed at the forty-ninth 
parallel. 



CHAPTER LIII 

THE MORMONS IN UTAH 

ONE of the most romantic tales in connection with 
American history is that of the Mormons or Lat- 
ter-Day Saints, as they called themselves, and of 
how they journeyed to the west in search of a Land of 
Promise. 

In 1830 a Vermont man, named Joseph Smith, claiming 
direct revelation from God, had founded the 3Iormon sect. 
That same year he issued the Book of Mormon, or the 
Mormon Bible. Smith's teachings were very different 
from those of any other Christian leader in America, and 
although he had a small following and succeeded in start- 
ing a church in Manchester, New York, he was generally 
distrusted and looked upon as a false prophet. His au- 
thority over his followers was absolute, like that of the 
Pope ; so he determined to take his people away from New 
York and into some newly settled part of the countiy, 
where they would be able to practise their faith uncriticised. 

The Mormon disciples followed their leader first to 
Ohio ; but there they found public opinion so much against 
them that they moved on to Jackson County, Missouri; 
and from thence to Illinois, where Smith was mobbed and 
kiUed. 

Like most religious sects, the Mormons seemed to thrive 
on persecution, for their numbers constantly increased un- 
der it. Smith's death was a great blow to them; but an 
able leader — Brigham Young — was found to replace him. 
Casting about for some spot of refuge where the Mormons 

could establish a permanent home, Young heard of the pe- 
sos 



306 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

gion around the great Salt Lake. Fremont, who had ex- 
plored it, was reported to have said that the valley of Bear 
River, a tributary to the Lake, made "a natural resting 
place for travelers." Its grazing lands were believed to 
be extensive, the water excellent, timber sufficient, and the 
rich soil only waiting to bring forth a variety of grains and 
grasses. Now the Mormons were farmers and graziers, so 
Young decided that they could not do better than to form 
themselves into one great caravan and travel to this won- 
derful district. Salt Lake was outside the LTnited States, 
in a portion of the neighboring republic of Mexico (with 
which the States were still at peace) and the JMormons ex- 
pected that there they would be left alone to enjoy their 
religion. The strange lake would furnish an endless sup- 
ply of salt, and Young felt sure that cattle and horses 
would thrive where grass and salt were so liberally pro- 
vided by nature. 

With hope in their hearts the Mormons set out for the 
west, one hundred and forty-seven of them, the men walk- 
ing and the women and children riding in the great wagons 
that carried their household goods. There were seventy- 
three of these wagons and, with the cattle and other live- 
stock, they made an unpressive caravan as it wound its slow 
way through the mountains. In July, 1847, the pilgrims 
caught the first glimpse of the land they had come to in- 
habit. Out from the Wasatch Mountains, the exiles saw, 
as they wended their way down to it, not the pleasant 
grassy plain of their dreams, but an arid desert with noth- 
ing growing on it except a tangled mass of sage bushes. 

To people less heroic this disappointment would have 
proved a frightful discouragement, but the hardy Mormon 
patriarchs were nothing daunted. They went systematic- 
ally to work, laid out their city at the foot of the hills be- 
side a river which they called the Jordan, because they 
imagined it resembled the river of Palestine. Unable to 



THE MORMONS IN UTAH 307 

get timber, they built their houses of adobe (baked mud) 
and then, taking counsel of their neighbors, the Pueblo 
Indians, the Mormons decided to raise crops as the Red 
Men did, by watering them artificially ; for rain was not a 
blessing to be depended upon in this curious region. 

So great was the industry of the newcomers that beauti- 
ful Salt Lake City, with its gardens and running streams, 
soon grew out of what had been a barren plain. Horace 
Greeley, who saw the city in its infancy, described it thus : 

"The houses have a neat and quiet look. They are gen- 
erally small and of one story. The uniform breadth of the 
streets (eight rods) and the 'magnificent distances' usually 
preserved by the buildings (each block containing ten 
acres, divided into eight lots, giving each householder a 
quarter of an acre for building and an acre for a garden) 
make up an ensemble seldom equaled. Then the rills of 
bright, sparkling, leaping water which flow through each 
street give an air of freshness and coolness which none can 
fail to enjoy." 

The running water which the Mormons had the wit to 
bring into their city from the mountain brooks and rivers, 
by means of canals and irrigating ditches, solved for the 
farmers the problem of cultivation; for when given the 
proper amount of moisture, the soil proved very productive. 

In selecting their new home, the Mormons had been 
moved by a desire to go outside the limits of their own 
country ; but fate decreed that they should not escape be- 
ing under the guardianship of the Union, for after the war 
with Mexico, at the time when California was ceded to the 
United States, the great Salt Lake district passed out of 
Mexican possession forever, and in spite of themselves the 
Latter-Day Saints were once more American citizens. 
At first they met with httle outside interference and their 
strange colony grew in strength and numbers. Because 
its doctrines were detested at home the Mormon Church 



308 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

sent out its missionaries to make converts in foreign lands, 
and from time to time the population around Salt Lake 
was recruited from abroad. It is not strange, therefore, 
that the ^lormon settlement had in it less of the spirit of 
national feeling than any other community and that it 
grevr more and more awav from the Union. 

The rulers of the Momion Church — the bishops, chief 
priests, and elders — came to be the actual rulers of a small 
republic. They both made the laws and admmistered 
them. Each member of the ^lormon society gave a tentli 
of liis hving to the support of the church. All who did 
not conform to the ^Mormon faith were denied any share in 
civil affau's, and the 3Iormons strongly discouraged the 
coming among them of any but their o^vn people. In tune 
this exclusiveness came to be looked upon as an element of 
danger to the Union. The character of the comitry about 
Salt Lake formed a natural stronghold from which the 
authority of the nation might be set at defiance. This did 
indeed happen, but the ^lormons were d:uigerous only be- 
cause of their isolation. As soon as the steady march of 
emigrants from east to west began, Salt Lake City be- 
came a half-way house for traveling multitudes. 

Although they profited by the influx of travelers, who 
bought their cattle, grain, horses and other supplies at high 
prices, the ^Mormons held out as long as they could agamst 
the interruption of their privacy: but they were a mere 
handful of people and they could not stay the wheels of 
progress. Their protests were of no avail. The absolute 
despotism of ^lormon rulers was broken up and the Lat- 
ter-Day Saints were dra"\m into the great vortex of ^-Vmeri- 
can interests and their religious practises were made to 
conform with the laws of the United States. 

L'tah, the name taken from an Indian tribe and mean- 
ing "those who dwell in the mountains" embraces all that 
great basin, six hundred miles long and tln*ee hundi-ed wide, 



THE MOR^IOXS IX UTAH 309 

which at one time must have been a vast inland sea. Ey 
far the best portion of the State is the valley in which the 
Latter-Day Saints had made their home. To-day a great 
3Iormon temple dominates beautiful Salt Lake City: but 
in spite of the lumdreds of worshipers who tlirong its por- 
tals, this splendid building is rather hke a monmnent to a 
lost cause, or perhaps it would be more fittingly described 
as a milestone in the expansion of the United States, for 
in setting up their home in the heart of the desert, the ^lor- 
mons accomplished a work as wonderful in its way as that 
accomplished by the early colonists in Xew England. 

3Iuch bitter dissension, persecution and heroism went to 
the settling and expansion of the United States, and one is 
often tempted to wonder what America's fate would have 
been if no impulse liad led men forth to seek regions where 
they would be mmiolested to worship God in a new way. 



CHAPTER LIV 

SLAVEKY IN THE UNITED STATES 

PRESIDENT Jefferson once said, in speaking of 
slaverj^ "I tremble for my country when I remem- 
ber that God is just." 

It seems to us strange that people in the United States 
could claim to belong to a free country while the}^ kept 
human beings in bondage. In an earlier chapter we have 
learned how slavery began in America. It is more diffi- 
cult to understand why it continued and how men could 
reconcile slave-owning with their sense of right and justice. 

At the time of the Revolutionary War slavery was 
looked upon, even in the South, as an evil that had been 
thrust upon the United States by Great Britain. ]\Iost 
persons thought of it as a temporar}'^ evil that would die a 
natural death as soon as the creaking machinery of the new 
republic began to run smoothly. 

As the country grew and prospered, however, slave 
labor became an ever-increasing source of profit; so that, 
while men still deplored slavery, they made no definite 
move to end it. 

In the early part of the nineteenth century the Louisiana 
Purchase came to tighten the bonds of the slave, for a vast 
tract of the most fertile land in the world was thrown open 
to the growth of cotton, and cotton demanded negro labor. 

In 1792 Eli Whitney had invented the cotton-gin. It 
was a machine for separating the cotton fiber from the 
seeds, and the use of it not only saved a tremendous amount 
of time and labor, but brought wealth within the gi-asp of 

310 




'rx IMAXY PLACES THE SLAVES WERE LIAPPY 



SLAVERY IX THE UNITED STATES 311 

any man who owned a little plantation and a few negroes 
to run it. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Southern 
planters reconsidered the question of slavery and decided 
that, an institution which had served their fathers well, 
should serve them even better. In answer to arguments, 
they claimed that the negTO was quite happy in captivity, 
happier than he would be if left to himself, and they 
pointed to the fact that slavery had made good serv-ants 
out of a savage people. 

In many places the slaves were happy. Xever having 
tasted the joy of freedom, they scarcely missed it. Their 
masters took pride in their welfare, because they were 
naturally kind and wished to make their slaves comfortable 
and content. On m:uiy of the plantations the negro quar- 
ters were clean and attractive; in front of the rows of 
white-washed cabins hollyhocks and smiflowers nodded 
gaily and the bondsmen went about their work with cheer- 
ful faces. They loved the f:miily at "the big house" and 
served it with willing devotion. 

The less fortmiate slave was, however, liable to be sold, 
torn from the arms of his wife and childi'en and sent where 
he miu'ht never see his dear ones ai^ain. The fact that 
slaves were often looked upon not as persons but as thmgs 
gives us the key to their suffering. 

Sometimes a negro would save up all the money given 
liim, or what he could make in his spare time, until he got 
enough to buy his freedom. Often, too, it happened that 
masters would free their slaves : but the hfe of these freed 
negroes was far from pleasant. The prejudice of the 
white population against a free negro was very bitter. 
The negro shared ahnost none of the privileges enjoyed by 
his white neighbors. The hardest lot of all. however, was 
borne by those wretched slaves who had the ill fortune to 
be the property of gross and cruel masters. There were 
a few men of this ugly stamp in the South, men who bul- 



312 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lied and swore at their slaves, who beat them until the 
blood came and behaved generally with brutal wickedness. 
Their rule meant torture for the negroes, when it did not 
mean death. 

"... weary, sad, and slow 
From the fields at night they go. 
Faint with toil, and racked with pain, 
To their cheerless homes again." 

The poor creatures had no redress for their sufferings. 
A runaway slave, if caught, might be punished by any 
means which his owner chose to employ. 

In the North, slavery had been looked upon with dislike 
for some time ; but that was because the Northerners feared 
the political power of the slave-owners; not because they 
had much sympathy with the negroes. The North shared 
the gains of slavery, for the cotton planters bought goods 
in Northern markets and sent cotton to the North for sale ; 
so the Northern merchants were in no hurry to interfere 
with a system that proved remarkably profitable. In the 
dispute which ended in the Missouri Compromise the right 
or wrong of slavery had scarcely been involved; that was 
simply a struggle between North and South and in which 
each section tried to gain political domination. 

The fii'st real interest in the slave as a human being was 
roused by a young man named William Lloyd Garrison, 
who was fired by an enthusiasm of pity to write articles 
pointing out the injustice endured by the negro. In 1831 
he published in Boston the first number of a paper called 
the Liberator, In it he urged that slavery be abolished. 
Garrison not only acted as author and editor for his paper : 
he set up the types as well, for he was a journeyman printer 
by trade. 

At first the Liberator met with scant attention. To be 
sure, one enraged slave-owner asked the Mayor of Boston 



SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 313 

to have the paper suppressed. The Mayor answered that 
it was too unimportant to be worthy of his interference. 
But he was mistaken. Garrison's articles were destined to 
reach a public ready to consider their teachings. Within 
a year after the publication of the first number of the 
Liberator an Anti- Slavery Society had been formed in 
America. Within three years there were two hundred so- 
cieties working for the freedom of the slave. 

An uprising of negroes in Virginia, in the year that 
Garrison's paper first appeared, was supposed to be his 
doing, although he really had no hand in it. Southern 
anger flamed up; for, as one historian puts it, "States are 
like human beings: they resent being interfered with and 
preached at." 

It was the beginning of a difficult time for the country ; 
for law and order went down in front of popular passion 
and right and wrong very badly confused. 

The Great Southern general, Robert E. Lee, and Alex- 
ander Stephens (who became the Vice-President of the 
Confederacy) were at first quite moderate men. They, 
like many of the best men in the South, were as convinced 
of the evils of slavery as were any of their Northern 
brothers ; they would not have lifted a finger to preserve it 
had they not been driven into taking up its defense as a 
protest against what they held to be the constitutional and 
unjustifiable meddling of the North with the sacred States 
Rights of the South. A little moderation on both sides 
might have averted a great deal of future suffering; but 
angry men are seldom moderate. 

Feeling had reached the boiling-point during Jackson's 
presidency; so that in 1835 "Old Hickory," whose sympa- 
thy was with the South, recommended Congress to forbid 
the postal authorities to carry anti-slavery publications 
into the Southern States. The Georgia Legislature of- 
fered a reward of five thousand dollars for Garrison's ar- 



314 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rest and conviction, and he had to be locked up in a Boston 
jail to protect him from rioters. 

In Illinois, which although a Free State was under the 
influence of the slave-owners of Missouri, a young clergj^- 
man named Love joy published a newspaper against 
slavery. He was asked to leave the neighborhood, but 
he refused to go. He protested that he had a right to free 
speech in a free country ; and when a mob sacked his print- 
ing-office and flung his press into the river, he bought an- 
other press. The arrival of the new machine infuriated the 
people of the town ; they attacked the warehouse where it 
was stored and some shots were exchanged between them 
and Love joy's friends who were guarding the building. 
Several of the rioters were killed and the mob, blind with 
rage, set fire to the building. When Mr. Love joy showed 
himself to the crowd he was fired at and fell pierced by five 
bullets. This lawless murder brought to the public notice 
Wendell Philhps, one of the most splendid orators of all 
time. He was strong in his denouncement of the crime. 
Phillips was Garrison's valued ally. Always the cham- 
pion of the oppressed, he upheld the cause of temperance, 
plead for the rights of the Indians, and demanded justice 
for women. His lectures and addresses did more for the 
cause of freedom than can well be estimated. 

The growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North had 
made it hard for Southern owners to reclaim runaway 
slaves, who escaped in large numbers to the free States. 
The Southerners complained of this as a violation of the 
old Fugitive Slave Law, which provided that all such fugi- 
tives should be sent back. At the same time many people 
in the Northern States complained that the buying and 
selling of slaves in the city of Washington, the capital of a 
free country, was highly improper. Taking these two 
grievances together, Henry Clay arranged a compromise. 
For the benefit of the Southerners he instituted a new 



SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 315 

Fugitive Slave Law, demanding the return of runaway 
slaves; this law was not to be left to the States to carry 
out, but to be entrusted to United States officers. To ap- 
pease the Northerners the compromise provided that 
slaves were no longer to be bought and sold in the District 
of Columbia, although slavery was not to be utterly 
abolished there. 

These measures, part of the "Compromise of 1850," 
smoothed the ruffled feelings of the people for a little while, 
but not for long. In many places the pity of the North 
was greatlj'- excited by the enforcing of the Fugitive Slave 
Law. There were many who could have said, with Walt 
Whitman, 

"The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, 
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, 
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him 

limpsy and weak, 
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and as- 
sured him. 
And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body 

and bruis'd feet. 
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and 
gave him some coarse clean clothes." 

For in spite of the United States officers who were ap- 
pointed to see that the slaves were returned to their own- 
ers, it often happened that the fugitives were quietly passed 
in to the Free States, as far away as possible from the scene 
of their bondage. 

In 1852 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe published her 
novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was intended to awaken 
sj^mpathy for slaves and it met with a remarkable success, 
three hundred thousand copies of the book being sold 
within a year. It probably made more converts to the 
cause of anti-slaverj^ than all the abolitionist orators and 



316 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lecturers in the country. It has been called "the most 
effective political pamphlet on record." The Northern 
boys who read and wept over the sufferings of Uncle Tom, 
or who shivered with hate over the brutality of Legree, 
were the voters of 1860 and the soldiers of 1861-65. 

Hope had dawned for the negro at last, but freedom was 
to be purchased for him at a tremendous cost. 



CHAPTER LV 

STORM CLOUDS GATHER. TROUBLE IN KANSAS 

ZACHARY TAYLOR had been elected President 
of the United States in 1849. As the hero of the 
victorious Mexican War he was very popular. A 
dow^nright man, keen and watchful, he did not fail to ap- 
preciate the danger threatening the country from a dispute 
between Free and Slave States. A Southern planter him- 
self, Taylor was yet able to view the question of slavery 
with an impartial mind; and had he lived his sane judg- 
ment might have exercised a restraining influence upon 
the red-hot leaders of the opposing parties. The Presi- 
dent died, however, before the trouble between North and 
South reached a stage for official action. Taylor's death 
was announced to the people on July 9th, 1850. He had 
contracted a violent fever from too long exposure to the 
heat of the 4th of July sun while attending the public cere- 
monies of the day. On the 10th of July, Millard Fillmore, 
Vice-President under Taylor, was quietly sworn into the 
office of Chief Executive. 

President Fillmore wished above all else to preserve, 
without hatred and without war, peace throughout the 
length and breadth of the United States. It was with this 
end in view that he sanctioned the passing of the Fugitive 
Slave Law ; but this law proved so unpopular with a large 
portion of his party in the North that it lost him its support 
and left a cloud on the fair fame of his administration. 

In spite of this. President Fillmore was an able man. 
He began the negotiations which ended in the Perry 

317 



318 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Treaty, opening the ports of Japan, and he maintained 
with dignity all relations with foreign powers, exacting 
justice and respect for the American flag. 

Franklin Pierce, a New Hampshire man, was elected by 
the Democratic party to succeed Fillmore as President.. 
In his inaugural address, delivered March 4th, 1853, he 
denounced slavery agitation and hoped that "no sectional 
or ambitious or fanatical excitement might again threaten 
the durability of the institutions, or obscure the light of 
our prosperity." 

Pierce was a lawyer by profession. Before his election 
to the Presidency he had served his country as a member 
of the House of Representatives and as a United States 
Senator. He was a man of no very great ability, however, 
and he proved quite unable to stem the tide of bitterness 
that was steadily rising to menace the land. 

In addition to the Whig and Democratic parties, there 
had arisen a third political body in the United States. It 
came into being after the close of the Mexican War and 
was known as the Free Soil party, because it was formed 
to prevent the coming into the Union of any more Slave 
States. At first the "Free Soilers" were too weak to cope 
successfully with the older parties for control in national 
affairs, but as time went on they grew stronger. Their 
ranks were filled with men who had been Wliigs, but who 
found that their old party no longer represented the grow- 
ing feeling against slavery, although it was still led by able 
statesmen like Daniel Webster. 

The Democratic party, being most numerous in the 
slave-holding States, was more firmly united than ever by 
the agitation about slavery which one of their great leaders 
told them could be maintained only by being extended. 

Disappointed at not having gained California for 
slavery, some Southerners had tried to purchase the island 
of Cuba in order to make new states from it. But Spain 



STORM CLOUDS GATHER 819 

refused to sell Cuba. Strangely enough the vast stretches 
of land so recently acquired from Mexico had only served 
to inflame the desire of the American people for more land, 
and so badly did a few of them want Cuba that they threat- 
ened to seize it by force. Secret expeditions were fitted 
out for the purpose of stirring up the islanders to insurrec- 
tion, but they amounted to nothing. Separate attempts 
were also made by mischief-makers to snatch territory from 
the weak states in Central America. These attempts met 
with no success, although they were continued until 1860 
and caused considerable anxiety to the United States Gov- 
ernment. At last, however, the leader of the filibusters 
was captured by Central American authorities and put to 
death. 

More serious trouble had for some time been agitating 
the people of the United States. Early in 1854 Stephen 
A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the 
Territories, introduced a bill to form two new Territories, 
Kansas and Nebraska, from the Louisiana Purchase. 
This bill provided that the inhabitants of Kansas and Ne- 
braska should choose for themselves whether theirs should 
be free or slave States. The vote of the greater number 
of people in each of these magnificent provinces was to de- 
cide the question once and for all. Now the Missouri 
Compromise had stipulated that slavery should never reach 
this region, but the slave-owners had become so strong 
that they dared to set the old pledge aside. 

Of course to each section it was of supreme interest to 
gain the vote in the new territories and in the rush of each 
party to be first on the ground the clash between North 
and South was actively begun. In the contest that fol- 
lowed. Congress and the President stood with the South. 

The main avenue of travel into the disputed territory 
was the Missouri River, the banks of which were already 
lined with a population holding many slaves. These peo- 



320 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pie were easily aroused to bestir themselves by the fear 
that the planting of a Free State next their border would 
cause their negroes to run away and so deprive them of 
their property. The Missourians, therefore, led the way 
into Kansas. They took possession of the lands and in- 
vited their friends from other States to bring their slaves 
and join them. Few of the Southern planters went. 
They were not fitted for the work of colonization and they 
knew it, but they sent a good many people from the class 
known as "mean whites." The "mean whites," or "poor 
white trash" as the negroes contemptuously call them, are 
the lowest type of persons that the South produces. Ut- 
terly without education, shiftless and lazy, they live by 
shooting and fishing and by poaching upon their indus- 
trious neighbors' fields. Gangs of these people were hur- 
ried over the borders into Kansas. Their vote was de- 
pended upon to hold the Territory for the South. 

Meanwhile, active steps were being taken for throwing 
Free-State settlers into Kansas. The focus of anti- 
slavery thought centered around Boston. It was to the 
Xew England States that the rest of the Xorth looked for 
leadership, and it was from them that the first colonizing 
parties were sent west. The Emigrant Aid Society was 
formed and was the forerunner of many similar societies. 
It worked with great method ; formed little colonies which 
were put under competent leaders, and were furnished with 
farming tools and even with sa-vvmills for helping in the 
construction of new settlements. Some colonists took 
their families with them, but most of the men went alone. 
Their spirit was not one of thoughtless adventure. They 
went west as crusaders, bound on a holy mission: for to 
save Kansas from slavery had become to them not a mere 
matter of politics, it had "struck a far deeper-toned chord. 
It had arrested the religious feelings of the country and 
taken a strong hold on the consciences of men." 



STORM CLOUDS GATHER 321 

We are told of a meeting that was held in a New Haven 
church to collect money to lit out a company of seventy- 
nine emigrants who were going to Kansas to battle for 
freedom. Among the things required for these men were 
fifty Sharpe's rifles. A well known professor subscribed 
for one, the minister of the chm-ch for another, and finally 
Henry Ward Beecher, the famous pastor of Plymouth 
Church, said that if twenty-five were promised, the mem- 
bers of his congregation would give the others. After that 
"the favorite arms of the Northern emigrants, Sharpe's 
rifles, were known as 'Beecher's Bibles.' " 

Poor Kansas ! It was hard that so fair a region should 
be the bone of contention between the Southerners, with 
their zeal for slavery, and the Xortherners, who were so 
determined not to countenance slavery. Feeling vras tense 
within the borders of the new Territory and the hostile fac- 
tions were not content with calling each other names. 
They resorted to all manner of petty insults and ugly tricks 
before they used the final argument of fire and sword. 

The immigrants from New England, Iowa and North- 
em Illinois were clearly in the majority; they were prac- 
tical pioneers, too, while the swashbucklers from the South 
spent their time in drinking, shooting, scouring the country 
for prey and frightening helpless women and children. 
The pro-slavery men saw that if they were to rid Kansas 
of the abolitionists, they must be up and doing. 

Under the lead of "Dave" Atchison, a Senator of the 
United States, secret societies known as "Blue Lodges" 
were formed for the purpose of ridding Kansas of those 
"Hireling immigrants, pom'ed in to extinguish this new 
hope of the South"; for so Atchison and his friends spoke 
of their Free State enemies. Steamers bound up the JNIis- 
souri River, bringing immigrants from the North, were 
stopped by the "Blue Lodge" men. They swarmed on 
board, drove off the passengers, put their cattle and goods 



322 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

ashore and compelled the captains of the steamers to go 
on and leave the unfortunates behind. These "Blue 
Lodge" ruffians would dash into Kansas, bum the grain 
and the cabins of the Free State men, drive off their cattle, 
and then return into Missouri, where they would be safe 
until thev were readv to make another raid 



CHAPTER LVI 



▼ ~r ^y 



I 



V 



^1" 



C^IS 



fir 



settled s 



324 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the coil that was hampering all possibility of a friendly 
understanding between North and South. 

As a peacemaker Buchanan was a failure simply be- 
cause his voice was drowned in the clamor about him. His 
messages constantly recommended conciliatory legislative 
measures; but Congress paid no attention to his advice. 
Like an unruly horse, the country was bolting towards 
civil war, with the bit of Government between its teeth, 
and it is as well to reproach Buchanan for a want of such 
vigor as might have averted the catastrophe as to blame 
the driver of a runaway horse for careless handling of the 
reins. 

Considering the state of the country, President Bu- 
chanan fulfilled his obligations very well. His manage- 
ment of foreign relations was excellent and his seeming 
weakness in conforming to the arbitrary will of Congress 
shows that he but did his loyal best in following the rules 
laid down by the Constitution. 

Buchanan never married. The death of the lady to 
whom he was engaged was a deep and lasting sorrow. His 
household was presided over by his niece, Harriet Lane, 
who made a very charming mistress of the White House, 
receiving many guests of distinction, among whom were 
the Prince of Wales and his suite. 

The splitting up of parties over the slavery question 
caused the Government to fear a division of the Union. 
Two forms of society so opposed to each other as slavery 
and freedom could not exist on equal terms. One of them 
must give way, and in order to determine which party was 
legally in the right it was decided to make a test case of the 
matter. Optimistic persons hoped that if once the Su- 
preme Court, from which there is no appeal, passed judg- 
ment on the question, everybody would be satisfied to abide 
by its decision. Slavery and Freedom could not be 



UNSHEATHING OF SWORD OF WAR 325 

brought into court, but a negro named Dred Scott was 
made to typify the question at issue in the country. 

Scott sued for his freedom on the plea that his master 
had once taken him to hve in the Free State of lUinois, and 
that his residence there made him a free man. The Su- 
preme Court decided that as Scott was an African whose 
parents had been slaves, he had no rights under the Con- 
stitution; that he would always remain a slave, no matter 
where he lived, unless his master saw fit to give him his 
freedom. It was also decided that Congress was power- 
less to forbid slavery in the Territories. 

This decision, far from settling anything, roused fresh 
revolt in the North. If the Constitution of the country 
was to be used to enforce a monstrous wrong, said the anti- 
slavery men, the struggle must be even more bitter than 
they had anticipated ; but as for giving up the fight for the 
emancipation of the negro — they would never do it. The 
Southerners, on the other hand, now felt themselves justi- 
fied in their determination to stop at nothing in their fight 
for their right to judge for themselves whether or not they 
should have slaves. 

The interest roused by the Dred Scott case focused with 
renewed excitement around the struggle in Kansas. 
There the men from the Northern States were managing 
to bring about a hard-won victory. Their industry and 
their constant reinforcements from the East told greatly in 
their favor. After a time they were strong enough to 
adopt a constitution excluding slavery from the Territory, 
and when Kansas came into the Union, she came as a 
Free State; but that was not until 1861. 

As soon as John Brown saw that the interests of the 
Free Soil party in Kansas were safe, he determined to 
carry the crusade against slavery farther afield. His plan 
was none less than to cause an insurrection of the slaves 



326 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

throughout the -whole South. In 1859, with a party of 
only twenty-two, including himself and live negroes ^ three 
of whom were rmiaway slaves) , he seized the United States 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virgina") . 
He was certain that God would uphold his cause: so he did 
not hestitate because his nmnbers were small. 

Besides his mighty faith, there was only one weapon that 
the fanatical leader cared to wield. That was a sword 
supposed to have been given by Frederick the Great, of 
Prussia, to George Washington. Legend said that en- 
graved upon it were the words, "From the oldest general 
in the world to the greatest." 

It is supposed that this sword, of which there is no au- 
thentic record, descended to the first President's nephew, 
Bushrod Wasliington, and from him passed to his brother, 
who in turn left it to his son. Colonel Lewis William AVash- 
ington. In 1859 the Colonel treasured this famous sword 
among a collection of Washhigton mementoes at his coun- 
try house, Bel Air, near Harper's Ferry. Americans at- 
tached a superstitious value to the weapon and John Brown 
felt that he would like to use it in his war against evil; so 
he sent a man to Bel Air to discover secretly where the 
sword was kept. This emissary was hospitably welcomed 
and shown the Washington relics and among them the 
sword around which such an interesting history has been 
built. It was disappointingly ordinary, for it had no 
jewels about it, nor any sign of German workmanship. It 
was ornamented simply with steel beads and looked a 
rather poor present for a ^lonarch to have made to a 
President. Bro^Mi was. nevertheless, determined to have 
it, and he deliberately weakened his fighting force by send- 
ing six of his men to fetch it. The delay thus caused to 
liis enterprise cost him dearly. 

It was on the niglit of October 17th that Brown reached 
Harper's Ferry and seized the arsenal. He hoped that 



UNSHEATHING OF SWORD OF WAR 327 

as soon as the negroes in the vicinity reahzed that he was 
there, ready to lead them, with a supply of ammunition 
for tlieir use, they would rally to his standard and strike 
a hlow for their own freedom; but the negroes refused to 
rise. 

For eighteen hours Brown and his men were busy cut- 
ting telegraph wires, providing defenses against attack, 
and imprisoning citizens. But before they had succeeded 
in enlisting more than a few blacks on their side, the raiders 
were besieged in the engine-house by a large number of 
town-folk and militia, to whom were soon added a force 
of United States marines, sent from Washington mider 
Colonel Robert E. Lee. The marines battered in the door 
of the engine-house and captured the insurgents after a 
brave resistance. Two of Brown's sons, Watson and 
Oliver, were killed along with eight others of his party. 
Five, including another son, Owen Brown, escaped. The 
rest were captured and after trial and conviction were 
hanged at Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia). 
Brown, who had himself been wounded, was among those 
condemned to death; but during the five weeks which 
elapsed between the sentence of death and its execution, he 
never lost heart. 

"I am gaining in health slowly," he wrote to his brother, 
*'and am quite cheerful in view of my approaching end, 
being fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more 
to hang than for any other purpose." To his visitors this 
far-seeing man said, "You had better — all you people of 
the South — prepare yourselves for a settlement of this 
question. . . . You may dispose of me very easily. I am 
nearly disposed of now ; but this question is still to be set- 
tled — the negro question, I mean." To a Southern clergy- 
man who offered to pray with him just before the end. 
Brown calmly remarked, "INIy dear sir, you know nothing 
about Christianity. Of course, I respect you as a gentle- 



328 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

man, but it is as a heathen gentleman." He would accept 
no ministrations from those who approved of slavery. 

John Brown was hanged on the 2nd of December, 1859. 
At first glance he seems to have accomplished little, but 
the consequences of his raid were far-reaching. The men 
of the South were roused to fierce anger at the very thought 
of a slave insurrection ; they knew that an uprising of the 
negroes would mean what it maddened them to think of — 
arson, massacre and an unspeakable fate for women and 
children. Brown had come among them, they said, to let 
loose the spirit of the jimgle and, worst of all, he had come 
to Virginia with arms and means with which he had been 
supplied by the Northerners. This was true and after 
this the breach between North and South widened beyond 
repair. 

In the North, Brown was held in proud veneration. He 
had given his life bravely for truth, as they saw it. His 
fearless bearing and resigned dignity between the time 
of his arrest and execution forced Emerson to exclaim: 
*'I wish we might have health enough to know virtue when 
we see it and not cry with the fools, 'JMadman!' when a 
hero passes." His actions may have been those of a 
fanatic, but Bro^^Tl's motives, as the North saw them, were 
beyond praise-glorious. In the war that followed. Union 
soldiers were upheld and strengthened by John Brown's 
example and they marched to fight for the freedom of the 
negro inspired by the stirring music and words : 

"John Brown's body lies a-molding in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on." 

It is a curious fact that when war came, some of the 
Union soldiers were as anxious as ever Brown had been to 
possess Washington's sword; but they searched for it in 
vain at Bel Air. Colonel Lewis Washington had en- 



UNSHEATHING OF SWORD OF WAR 329 

trusted it, the story goes, to the care of an old retainer, 
named Odin, and no one thought of looking for it in the 
house of this poor man; so there it remained during all 
the days of the Civil War. 

In writing of the sword, ^Ir. Conway finds it significant 
that the name of the man who had the custody of the f ahu- 
lous weapon was Odin — "the god of tlie sword." 
"jNIythologists," he tells us, "have identified Odin's sword 
as the lightning ; but from it are descended, by mythological 
lineage, the supernatural swords of Siegfried, Arthur's 
'Excalibur,' and the equally mythical sword which Fred- 
erick the Great sent to Washington." 

These legendary swords all symbolized something higher 
than mere brute force; they were beautiful because they 
came into the world to slay evil. It needs no mysterious 
tale of jeweled hilt and royal gift to make Washington's 
sword precious in the eyes of his countrymen. The unpre- 
tentious blade of American workmanship which he wielded 
during the Revolution is beautiful in itself, because it 
stands for the might which upholds right. The same vision 
of liberty which made Washingiion strong, mspired Bro^\-n 
and caused the mystic sword of war to be unsheathed again 
to rid the world of a cruel wrong. 



CHAPTER LVII 

ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

IN 1859 Henry W. Longfellow wrote from his quiet 
study in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "Even now . . . 
they are leading old John BrowTi to execution in 
Virginia, for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sow- 
ing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will soon come." 
It came the next year, and the sullen rumble of its coming 
sounded in the excitement caused by the Presidential 
election. 

Political jealousy had been stimulated by the addition 
to the Union of two more Free States, ^linnesota and Ore- 
gon, and both North and South were fuming over the 
slavery question. They realized that no peaceful settle- 
ment of their quarrel could be attained. It must be "war 
to the knife." Already the great religious denominations 
were divided by the burning question of slavery ; the Whig 
party had been destroyed ; and now the Democratic party 
was to be divided. 

A National Convention of Democrats met in April, 
1860, to nominate a successor to James Buchanan ; but they 
could not agree upon their man, so their vote was finally 
distributed among three candidates, the best known of 
whom was that Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, the author 
of the famous Kansas-Nebraska Bill that had caused so 
much trouble. 

The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for 
President, and he gained an easy victory over his three op- 
ponents, because he was supported by the united anti- 
slavery sentiment of the North. 

330 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 881 

If God ever raised up a man to succor a nation in its 
time of need, that man was Abraham Lincoln. The blood 
of pioneers ran in his veins, the sterling qualities of North 
and South found union in his dignity of character, and in 
him Americans have an example of the superb simplicity 
that may ennoble man. 

Lincoln once said that the story of his early life could 
be described by a single sentence of Gray's Elegy, "The 
short and simple annals of the poor." The son of Thomas 
Lincoln, he was born in Hardin county, Kentucky, on the 
12th of February, 1809. His grandfather had emigrated 
to Kentucky from Virginia in 1780, at the instigation of 
his friend, Daniel Boone, the famous explorer of that beau- 
tiful region. 

The pioneer was an industrious, hardworking man. He 
took up a claim of four hundred acres, built a log cabin 
near the military post of Fort Beargrass, the site of the 
present city of Louisville, and with the help of his sons, 
set about clearing the land and making it into a workable 
estate. One day, two years after his settlement in Ken- 
tucky, he was working in a field v/hen a marauding Indian, 
firing from behind a bush, killed him before the eyes of his 
sons. The murderer then tried to make off with the 
youngest boy, Thomas, but INIordecai, an older brother, 
dashed into the cabin, seized his rifle and, crouching in 
front of one of the loop-holes cut in the logs, he took steady 
aim and fired at the Indian, who dropped to the ground 
dead, with the terrified white child unharmed in his arms. 

The boy so miraculously saved from being kidnaped 
grew up to be the father of the future President. Thomas 
Lincoln never had any education, for there were no schools 
in the wilds of Kentucky, and his widowed mother could do 
no more for her children than keep a poor roof over their 
heads and get them enough food to save them from starva- 
tion. As Thomas grew up he learned the necessary lessons 



332 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

of the wilderness — to shoot straight, to fell forest trees, 
to break up the soil, and to build the rough log cabins of 
the time. He was a tall, well-built, muscular fellow, and 
while he was yet a boy he hired hmiself out as a laborer, 
working for others and taking for wages whatever he could 
get. In 1806 he married a dark slip of a girl named Xancy 
Hanks. 

The young husband took his bride to live in a log cabin 
that he had built, near Xolin Creek, in what is now Larue 
County, Kentucky. This region was well covered with 
timber and rich in possibilities; but Thomas Lincoln was 
not a man to make the most of his opportunities. He al- 
ways had what he himself termed "bad luck." The poor 
man was incompetent and easily discouraged, but all his 
misfortunes he blamed to liis lack of education. Whatever 
the cause, his was always a very humble and even poverty- 
stricken home, although it was brightened by his courage- 
ous wife, who did her utmost to help on her husband's 
fortunes. 

Xancy Lincoln could use a rifle as well as a man. Bears, 
deer and other wild creatures were plentiful in the forest ; 
so her table seldom lacked meat, and her tlu'ifty fingers 
were cmming in converting the skins of the wild beasts into 
garments, moccasins, and caps. She was a hardworking 
woman, but her soft, mirthful eyes took delight in the 
beauty of the country round her little home. She would 
often look up from her household tasks to watch the play 
of the sun and clouds on the hills that there rise to the dig- 
nity of mountains. 

One great pleasure that the young wife had was her 
passionate fondness for reading. She had had a made 
schooling in Virginia, and one of the first things she did 
was to teach her husband to read. Her books must have 
been very few, but she made the most of them. Years 
afterward her son said that his earliest recollection of his 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 333 

mother was of his sitting, with his sister, at her feet while 
she read or told them stories. 

Nancy Lincoln's first child was a daughter, Sarah. 
This baby girl was two years old when Abraham was born. 
The mother dreamed great things for her children; and 
the father, in his slow mind, determined that no child of his 
should ever be crippled as he had been for lack of knowl- 
edge of the commonest rudiments of learning. But the 
Lincoln home was far from anj^ large settlement and there 
were no schools, nor even churches, near it. 

Abraham, or Abe as he was called, was seven years old 
before he had any chance of regular lessons, although his 
mother had taught him the alphabet and he was already 
thirsting for the great experience of going to school. In 
1815, Zachariah Riney di'ifted into the neighborhood and 
opened a httle log schooUiouse for the children of the back- 
woods. As Lincoln said in after-years, "No qualification 
was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and 
cipherin* to the rule of three"; and Riney was probably 
the most primitive of teachers. But little Abe Lincoln 
greedily absorbed all the "learnin' " that the good man had 
to give, and when Riney was replaced by a manly young 
fellow, named Caleb Hazel, the boy had three never-to-be- 
forgotten months of instruction from him. Altogether, 
however, Abraham Lincoln never had more than a year's 
schooling. His father needed him at home, and the family 
soon moved into even wilder regions than Kentucky, where 
there was no more opportunity for lessons. But so great 
was the boy's desire to learn that he made the most of every 
crumb of knowledge that came his way. He practised by 
himself the rules of arithmetic that Hazel had taught him ; 
he read over all the books he could find; and he carefully 
tliought out for himself every subject which puzzled him. 
Even as a child he wrote down his impressions of what he 
had read and of what he saw about him ; and thus his educa- 



334 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

tion was preparing itself and shaping him for a great 
destiny. 

Lincoln never saw a church until he was a full grown 
man, but his parents were God-fearing folk and the Bible 
was one of the few books that he had at his disposal. It 
was his primer and, throughout his life, his principal book 
of reference. From time to time during his boj^hood, 
wandering preachers visited the regions in which the Lin- 
colns lived and the sermons preached by these worthy men, 
under the trees or in one of the cabins of the neighborhood, 
furnished the boy with much food for thought. It fas- 
cinated him to hear these men speaking, apparently with- 
out any previous study or preparation, and it is quite likely 
that alone in the woods the lad often tried his powers of 
oratory, haranguing the trees and the silence with his boy- 
ish eloquence. 

Thomas Lincoln tired of his Kentucky home and in 1816 
he sold it for "ten barrels of whisky and twenty dollars in 
cash." In those days whisky was a perfectly lawful sub- 
stitute for money, for it was an article of daily use even in 
places where drunkeimess was almost unknown. The Lin- 
colns moved to the newly opened country of Indiana and 
settled in a rich and fertile forest region near Little Pigeon 
Creek, not far from the Ohio River. 

Here real hardship overtook the family. It seemed as 
though misfortune had tracked them from the time of their 
setting out from their old home; for the flat-boat which 
carried the precious barrels of whisky and the heavier 
articles of household furniture down the Rolling Fork 
River was upset where the stream joins the waters of the 
Ohio, and most of the cargo was lost. The Lincolns 
reached the woods of southern Indiana too late in the au- 
tumn to make very comfortable preparations for the win- 
ter, and they were obliged to spend those first months of 
bitter cold in a *'half-faced camp" — that is a cabin with one 




'LIT'ILE AIIK \V(H;i.1> Si 1 LI' RLAIUXG HALF TUE NIuUX, JJV 

CUTTERINC FLAME OF A 'tALLOW Dir" 



/ , \. r, M 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 335 

side left out and the fire built out-of-doors, in front of the 
open side. When spring came they were able to build a 
more suitable home, but the cold and privation had told 
heavily on Nancy Lincoln, who was always overworked 
and never very strong. When a mysterious disease at- 
tacked the settlers in the region, she fell a victim to it and 
died after a short illness. Her death left her husband and 
children very helpless and forlorn. 

Sarah was only eleven years old, too young to be much 
of a housekeeper, and Abe was only nine. Thomas Lin- 
coln did the best he could for his motherless children, but 
he was always a helpless man and the cabin fell into sad 
disorder. The children did pretty much as they pleased. 
Little Abe would sit up reading half the night, by the light 
of a blazing fire or the guttering flame of a "tallow dip." 
He knew ^ sop's Fables and The Pilgrim's Progress al- 
most by heart before he was ten, as well as a life of Henry 
Clay that his mother had managed to buy for him. He 
thought nothing of walking miles to borrow a book from 
some friendly settler; the story of how Weems' Life of 
Washington came into his possession is well known. 

Abe had heard that JNIr. Crawford, who lived a day's 
tramp from the Lincoln cabin, ovraed the book; so he went 
to borrow it, and carried it triumphantly home in the bosom 
of his hunting shirt. The greater part of a joyful night 
he spent absorbed in its pages, and when sleep at last over- 
came him he tucked the treasure securely into a chink in 
the log wall above his bed. While he slept a drenching 
storm came up and the book was soaked through. When 
Abe di'ew it from its hiding-place in the morning, it seemed 
as if his little heart must burst with sorrow and despair ; 
for not only was the precious volume ruined, but it was a 
borrowed book and how was he to make up to its owner for 
the destruction it had suffered in his care? A very miser- 
able little boy, he took the blistered and discolored lAfe of 



/ 



336 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Washington back to its o^^Tle^. 3Ir. Crawford f^o^^-l■led at 
Abraham with mock severity and asked him what he meant 
to do about it. With a trembUng hp the boy answered that 
he would do anything that !Mr. Crawford thought just and 
fair. It was therefore agreed that he should pull fodder 
for three days, by way of settlement. 

''And will that pay for the book or only for the damage 
done to itT' the future President asked. 

"Wal, I allow," said the kindly Crawford, "that it won't 
be much account to me or anybody else now. and the bar- 
gain is that you pull fodder three days and the book is 
yours." 

In 1819 Thomas Lincoln went away for a month or two 
and left the children to take care of themselves. A'Slien 
he returned he brought with him a new wife. This step- 
mother was no stranger to Sarali and Abe, for they had 
known her in Kentucky- as a kindly widow, ^Irs. Sally 
Bush Johnston, and had played with her children, who 
were near their own age. They were glad to see her again, 
and srladder still of the new sense of well-beiui:: and order 
that her coming brought into their wilderness home. 

Tlie second ^Irs. Lincoln was a thrifty, motherly woman 
of some means. She brought her o^^^l cliildi-en with her 
to her new home: so the cabin was full to overflowing with 
young people: but the capable mistress fomid places for 
them all. making no difference between her ovni and her 
husband's children. 

For the next ten years the Lincolns lived a busy, strenu- 
ous life on the Indiana farm. Abraham may have 
dreamed of striking out in the world for himself, but his 
father needed hmi at home, so he cheerfully bided his time, 
laboring diligently, at felling timber, building fences, 
plowing fields and sowing and reaping the crops. By the 
time he was nineteen he had gained the great stature of six 
feet four inches. He was slender for his height and rather 



ABRAHAM LI^XOLN 337 

awkwardly fashioned, but he was remarkably muscular 
and very strong. It was said that he could outrun and 
outwalk any one in the neighborhood and that he could 
"strike the hardest blow with ax or maul, jump higher and 
farther than any of his fellows, and there was no one far 
or near that could lay him on his back." But strong 
though lie was, his manner was as gentle as a woman's and 
there was about him a kindliness that endeared hmi to 
everybody that knew him. He had a great gift of story- 
telling and a blithe sense of hmnor that made him a wel- 
come addition to any company. 

In spite of his hard work in field and forest, Abe Lin- 
coln's studies were not neglected. He never shirked any 
duty, however miwelcome, yet he fomid time to study al- 
most incessantly. One of his boyhood friends wrote of 
liim, "He was always reading, writing, ciphering, and writ- 
ing poetry." Perhaps the great secret of his success lay 
in his thorouolmess. If he beo-an to studv anvthinj^ he 
was never satisfied until he "got to the bottom of it." 

When he was about eighteen, yomig Lincoln had his 
first glunpse of the great world outside the backwoods. 
"With his own hands he built a little boat, loaded it with 
bacon and garden truck and paddled do-^iistream to the 
nearest trading-post. A year later he made a more ex- 
tended vovacje, Q'oin^ as far as Xew Orleans in charo-e of 
a fiat-boat and a cargo of produce belonging to ]Mr. 
Gentry, the owner of a country store in the neighborhood 
of the Lincoln home. This journey of eighteen hundred 
miles was a great adventure for the vouncr man. His con- 
templative gray eyes absorbed and weighed all that he saw. 
It was on this voyage that he first came face to face with 
the problem of slavery — the problem that he was to spend 
his life in solving. He saw slaves at work on the planta- 
tions, or bending beneath their tasks on the wharves of the 
river towns, or (what impressed liim more painfully) he 



/ / / 



388 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

saw slaves herded into pens on the river boats, bound up 
the Mississippi to be sold at auction! He heard "the 
wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the 
husky gangs pass on by two's and three's, fastened together 
with wrist-chains and ankle-chains." He never forgot 
these sights. Years after he said, "I know there is a God 
and that he hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm 
coming, and I know his hand is in it. If he has a place 
and work for me, and I think he has, I believe I am ready. 
I am nothing, but truth is ever}i;hing. I know that I am 
right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ 
teaches it, and Christ is God." 

In 1830 the Lincolns once more "pulled up stakes" and 
moved westward. Thomas Lincoln, always restless, was 
delighted to follow the suggestion of his first wife's rela- 
tive, Thomas Hanks, who proposed that his Indiana 
friends follow him into the prosperous region of Illinois, 
whither he had emigrated the year before. So, loading all 
their movable belongings on to one huge wagon, drawn by 
four oxen, the Lincoln family journeyed a weary way 
across the prairies into "the land of full-grown men," which 
is the meaning of Illinois in the Indian language. 

Arrived near the village of Decatur, Abe brought the 
great wagon to a standstill in a clearing which Hanks had 
selected as suitable for a home. Here the stalwart Abe 
helped to build the cabin that was to shelter the family; 
and when that work was done he and Thomas Hanks 
plowed fifteen acres of soil, cut down and split walnut logs 
from the forest, fashioned them into rails, and with them 
fenced his father's first Illinois farm. 

Abraham Lincoln was now twenty-one years old and 
able and anxious to make his own living. His father could 
spare him, so he went to work for himself in the State that, 
in the future, was to borrow great luster from his name. 

For nearly a year he served as a clerk in a small store, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 339 

measuring off yards of calico and handing pounds of bacon 
over the counter. He always had a cheery word for his 
customers, this young giant, and so absolutely was he 
trusted that a busy mother would often bring in a baby 
for Abe Lincoln to "mind" while she finished some house- 
hold task. It was not an uncommon sight to see the Presi- 
dent-that-was-to-be rocking a cradle with his foot, while 
he bent over an English grammar, or studied the fii'st prin- 
ciples of law; for trade was not so flourishing but that it 
left him plenty of leisure for study. 

When the Indian Chief, Black Hawk, in command of 
his bands of Sacs and Foxes made war on the whites of 
Illinois, Lincoln volunteered in a company raised by the 
settlers in Sangamon County and was at once elected cap- 
tain. Of his experiences in this war, he made light in 
after-years: *'I had a good many bloody struggles with 
the mosquitoes," he said, "and although I never fainted 
from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very 
hungry." 

Back from the war, young Lincoln bought a small store, 
giving his note for the whole amount of money involved. 
This proved an unlucky venture, for he was associated with 
a rascally partner who left him with a debt which it took 
him several years to meet; but his scrupulous payment of 
every penny that he owed and the frugal way in which he 
lived until he was out of debt, gained for him the nickname 
of "Honest Abe," which clung to him all through life. 

After he gave up the store he devoted himself seriously 
to the study of law, supporting himself meanwhile by land- 
surveying. Finally he turned his attention to politics, and 
in 1834 his public career began when he was elected a mem- 
ber of the Legislature of Illinois. 

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, of Kentucky, 
whom he met in Springfield, Illinois, where she was visiting 
a sister. His home from then on was in Springfield, where 



/ 



340 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

for twenty-six years he practised law. During the greater 
portion of those years he was serving his country in some 
capacity, either in the Senate or Congress or in the pubhc 
life of his State. He took part in all the great political 
controversies of the time, and the debates between him and 
Senator Douglas, in 1858, over the questions raised by the 
repeal of the ^Missouri Compromise made his name famous 
throughout the country. His honesty, his moderation, and 
his strong speeches brought him the nomination of Presi- 
dent in his fifty-second year; and the remainder of his 
history is one with that of the United States. 



CHAPTER LVIII 

THE GREAT CITIL WAK IS BEGUN 

EARLY in February, 1861, Lincoln left Spring- 
field for Washington, where he was to be in- 
augurated in ]March. Already threats of assas- 
sination were breathed against him by the friends of 
slavery ; he was the pivot on which the hopes and fears of 
the nation turned. How would he act? Xot only 
America, but the whole world asked the question. Bowed 
down with the sense of his great responsibility, Lincoln, 
standing on the back platform of the train, took leave of 
his fellow-to"vvnsmen, who had gathered at the railway sta- 
tion to say good-by to him : 

"... I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I 
may return, with a task before me greater than that which 
rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
Divine Being who ever attended him I cannot succeed. 
With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who 
can go with me and remain with you, and be everywliere 
for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. 
To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers 
you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 

In the four months that had elapsed since Lincohi's elec- 
tion in Xovember, the antagonism between North and 
South had developed alarmingly. President Buchanan 
had been helpless as a peacemaker; indeed, it was whis- 
pered that he secretly favored the extreme slavery party, 
wliich had begun to make preparations for withdrawing 

341 



342 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

from the Union as soon as it was clear that by remaining 
loval to the Government thev would have to be sub i ect to 
a man ''whose opinions and purposes were hostile to 
slavery/' 

The movement of secession started in South Carolina, 
where an Ordinance was passed on December 20, 1860, 
chssolving the Union and declaring the State to be a free 
and independent republic. High carnival was held in 
Charleston to celebrate the passing of this Ordinance; bells 
pealed and the streets of the city echoed to the infectious 
strains of tlie Marseillaise. 

Other "cotton States" hastened to follow the example 
of South Carolina. Georgia, Alabama, ^Mississippi, 
Louisiana and Florida loudly asserted their independence 
and joined themselves into what they were pleased to call 
the "Confederate States of America.'* They adopted a 
constitution of their o-wn and chose Jefferson Davis, of 
Mississippi, to be their President for a term of six years. 

Davis held the office of President as long as the Con- 
federacy lasted. He was a Kentuckian by birth and a 
soldier by profession. A graeiuate of the ^lilitar}* Acad- 
emy at West Point, he had served in the ^lexican "War, 
where as a colonel in a ^Mississippi regiment he gained dis- 
tinction for his courage and coohiess in action. For sev- 
eral years he was sent as a United States Senator from 
Mississippi, and under President Pierce lie acted as Secre- 
tary of War. He entered the Senate again in 1857, and 
resigned m 1861 when ^lississippi seceded. 

In his inaugural address, Davis upheld the right of a 
discontented State to separate itself from the Union, since 
the Union had "ceased to answer the ends for which it was 
established." He was a persuasive speaker. He hoped, 
he said, that their late associates would "not incur the fear- 
ful responsibihty" of disturbing them in their pursuit of a 
separate career. "If they do," he continued, "it only re- 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IS BEGUN 343 

mains to us to appeal to arms, aiid invoke the blessing of 
Providence on a just cause." 

In the South it was not thought that the Xorthemers 
would tight. The conmion boast was that the Xorth was 
""too absorbed in money gettmg to go to war: or, if she 
did — one Southerner could whip four Yankees I" 

It must be remembered that the Southerners were the 
aristocrats of America. They had intense respect for the 
"ruling classes'* and for "gentle blood." The institution 
of slavery had helped to stimulate the pride of the slave- 
owners, for it gave scope to their sense of superiority and 
fostered their contempt for manual labor. Their faults 
were the rank fruit of a wrong system, but their virtues 
were the flowering of instinctive chivalry and inlaerited 
idealism. Even their struggle to perpetuate slavery had 
a flavor of greatness about it. and their bravery and per- 
sonal com*age were absolutely heroic. 

The Xorthemers were a diiferent type. They had 
learned to appreciate the dignity of labor. They had suf- 
fered and overcome in the hard School of Xecessity and 
so could afford to smile at Southern taunts aimed at ''pett}' 
shopkeepers.*' They seldom spoke of themselves as 
srentlemen. thev were content with beinj? Americans. 

With the passing of the ordinance of secession, the 
South ranged herself deflantly against the Xorth: it was 
the Old against the Xew, and the trouble that resulted was 
as complex as character, for the bomidary line of sentiment 
was not easily defined. The free population of the seced- 
ing States were not mianimous in their desire to break up 
the Union, nor were the people in the twenty-tlu-ee States 
that remained loyal to the Union agreed in their con- 
demnation of slavery. As Lincoln said, it was not a ques- 
tion of two sides only but of "at least four sides : there were 
those who were for the Union with, but not without slaverv : 
those for it without, but not ". ith ; those for it with or with- 



344 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

out: and those who Tvished to leave the Union and keep 
slavery." The maze seemed fairly inextricable. 

What Lincoln's pohcy would be in the handling of the 
matter was not known. It was recognized, however, that 
in his anxiety to preserve the Union whole and undivided 
he would go as far as honor would allow to arrange a peace- 
ful compromise. 'Tf we don't all join now to save the 
good old ship of the Union this voyage/* he had said, in a 
speech made en route for Washington, "nobody will have 
a chance to pilot her on another voyage." He drew his 
sinule, perhaps, from a stanza of Longfellow's Building of 
the Ship, of which he was very fond : 

''Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears. 
With all the hopes of future vears. 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate I" 

His inaugural address was awaited with grave curiosity: 

and when it came generosity breathed in every word of it. 
If the Southerners had expected threats from Lincoln, they 
were disappointed: but he made a plain statement of their 
case and of his convictions in regard to it. "... Xo 
State," he said, ''upon its own mere motion, can lawfully 
get out of the Union: resolves and orduiances to that ef- 
fect are legally void : acts of violence within any State, or 
States, against the authority of the United States are in- 
surrectionary, or revolutionary, according to circum- 
stances." He declared the purpose of the Union consti- 
tutionally to defend and maintain itself : but in doing this, 
he said, "there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there 
shall be none unless it is forced upon the national author- 
ity." In another part of the address, appealing directly 
to the Southerners, he said: 'In your hands, my dissatis- 
fied f ellow-countr\'. and not in mine, is the momentous issue 



THE GRIL\T CRIL WAR IS BEGL'X 34o 

of ciTil war — you have no o<i:li registered in Heaven to 
destroy the Govemmeiit, vrlii'e I h.ive the most solemn one 
to preserve, protect, aiid deiend it." 

As socxi &s President Liiiooln ^vas inst^iUed in office the 
Southern GoTemcient sent ambassadors to him as to a 
foreign power. iMr. Seward. Secretary of State in tiie 
new Cabinet, intimated to these gentlemen that the Presi- 
dent could not receive them because he could not recogniiB 
the new Government at all. and he would not hold official 
intercourse with its agents. The discomfited ambassadors 
went hcsne, and tbe Soutli, more inflamed than ever against 
the Uni<m, made ready for war. 

In accordance with their plan of Confederacy, the rebels 
tried to seiK the posts, arsenals and other pubhc property 
of the United States tiiat was within their boundaries. 
Fort Sumter in CharkstoQ harbor, under tbe command of 
Major Robert Anderson, held out against capture. The 
phicty little garnstm of seventy men refused to surrender, 
although their supply of piovisiocis had bea[i cut off and 
tbey knew that tiiey were being quietly endrded with 
batteries. 

Soon after his inauguration, Lincoln ordered that meas- 
ures be taken to reinforce and supply the garrison at Fort 
Simiter. Ships were sent for this purpose: but a storm 
detained them outside the bar, and the delay gave the 
Sonthaners time to act. They at once summoned Major 
Andersen to surrooder. He offered to go in three days, if 
he was not relieved: but he was told that unless he left in 
one boor the fort would be bombarded. 

At daybreak c«i the 12th of April, 1S61, a Confederate 
shell burst over Fort Sumter and the great Civil War was 
begun. The garrisan could make coly a feeble resp«ise. 
Th-ey held out, however, for thirty-six hours, although tiie 
woodwork of tbe fort was many times cm fire and the waDs 
were being pounded to pieces. But at last Major Ander- 



346 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

son was forced to surrender, when his food supply was 
utterly exhausted. 

Strangely enough, no one was killed on either side dur- 
ing the bombardment; but all doubt was at an end — the 
peace of the country had been battered down, together with 
the walls of Fort Sumter. Excitement had crystallized 
into action. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkan- 
sas and Texas joined the Confederacy, and so made the 
cleavage between North and South geographical^ definite. 

On April loth Lincoln issued a proclamation, of which 
the following is a part: "The laws of the United States 
have been for some time past, and now are, opposed, and 
the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisi- 
ana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be sup- 
pressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. 
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the 
Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth 
the militia of the several States of the Union to the aggre- 
gate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress 
said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly 
executed." 

The South had thought that the North would not fight ; 
but nearly a hundred thousand men who enlisted in the 
Northern States in the first three days after Lincoln's call 
to arms proved that loyalty to the Union was not dead. 
Rich men offered money and ships to help the Government ; 
and all the paraphernalia of war was speedily got together. 

In the South enthusiasm burned equally high. Young 
men took up arms in deadly earnest ; indeed the fair hands 
of the Southern women helped to buckle on the swords, the 
pride of Southern mothers dressed their sons for battle. 

In the border States there was a turmoil of divided sym- 
pathies. It was touch-and-go for a time, whether Mary- 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IS BEGUN 347 

land, Kentucky and Missouri should stay by the Union or 
join the Confederacy. On April 19th, the anniversary day 
of the Battle of Lexington, a rebel mob set upon the Sixth 
JVtassachusetts Regiment as it hastened through the streets 
of Baltimore, on its way to protect the Capitol at Washing- 
ton. INIen on both sides were killed and wounded and so 
the first blood of one of the saddest contests in history was 
spilled. 

"The despot's heel is on thy shore, 
Maryland ! 
His torch is at thy temple door, 

Maryland ! 
Avenge the patriotic gore 
That flecked the streets of Baltimore, 
And be the battle queen of yore, 
Maryland, my Maryland !" 

sang the people of the South. 

"I hear the distant thunder-hum, 
Maryland ! 
The 'Old Line's' bugle, fife, and drum, 

Maryland ! 
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb ; 
Huzza ! she spurns the Northern scum ; 
She breathes ! She burns ! She'll come ! She'll come ! 
Maryland, my Maryland !" 

But although Maryland was in great danger of being torn 
in two, in the end she stayed by the Union. 

Many of the inhabitants of Missouri were in favor of 
secession, but the State was prevented from joining the 
Southern coalition largely through the exertions of Gen- 
eral Lyon, who lost his life in the services of the Union. 
Kentucky also was saved for the North, but not until she 
had given the administration much anxiety. 



348 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Virginia seceded, but in the western part of the State, 
where the slaves were few, the Union sentiment was so 
strong that the people there separated themselves from 
Virgiaia and, in 1862. formed a new State which took the 
name of West Virginia and was admitted into the Union 
the following year. It is not to be supposed that this was 
accomphshed without fighting. Several small battles had 
to be fought before West Virginia passed into the control 
of the Federal Government. The most important engage- 
ment took place at Rich ^lountain, June 11. 1861, when 
General George B. 3IcClellan was in command of the 
Union troops. After a battle that lasted not more than 
an hour and a half, he wrested West Virginia from the 
Confederacy. 

It was a great blow to the South not to secure the border 
States, for they were rich in Indian com. which the Con- 
federates had counted on to help to feed their army. 
When it is remembered that the Southerners were depend- 
ent upon the Xorth for nearly everything but bread and 
meat, their temerity in enterhig upon this war seems re- 
markable. Their great hope was that they would be able, 
in exchange for cotton, to get implements and mmiitions of 
war, and the necessaries of Hfe from Europe. Four days 
after the fall of Fort Sumter, however, Lincoln pro- 
nounced a blockade on all the Confederate ports. At first 
he had too few ships to enforce it, but within a ver}' short 
time this lack was remedied and every Southern port was 
closed. From then on until the end of the war the Con- 
federates obtained foreign supplies only from vessels which 
managed to evade the blockading force — a trade so des- 
perate that few sea-captaius cared to risk it. 

Together with the com lands, the Southerners lost the 
Ohio and the Potomac Rivers, a splendid line of defense 
which they had expected to hold. But their spirit was not 
easily dashed. The confidence of the Confederate States 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IS BEGUN 349 

in themselves was supreme. These eleven States with 
their nine million people, three and a half million of whom 
were slaves, gallantly and without a tremor of fear con- 
fronted the twenty-three loyal States of the Union, whose 
population was twenty -two miUions. The proportion was 
nearly that of live to two; but the Southerners were not 
dismayed. "Philip of Spain could not subdue Holland," 
tiieT said; "and did not the Grecians vanquish Xerxes T' 

The Southerners were fighting for hberty, for "States' 
Rights." The Xorth, stem and implacable, was to win; 
but before the war was over the South earned the imstinted 
admiration of the world, so great was her courageous bear- 
ina: in adversitv. During the four vears of constant and 
pathetic strife, new bonds of kinship and respect were be- 
ing forged silently between Xorth and South : so that when 
peace tinally returned to the United States, all signs of 
triumph in the Xorthem army were hushed by General 
Grant's calm words: "The war is over; the rebels are our 
countrvmen a^rain." 



CHAPTER LIX 

THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 

"If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by thee, our present pain. 
Be Liberty's eternal gain. 
Thy will be done." 

Whittier. 

THERE had been a good deal of desultory fighting, 
but the first really important battle of the Civil 
War was that known as the Battle of Bull Run, 
which took place at the railroad junction of Manassas, a 
strategic point between Washington and Richmond, the 
respective capitals of the Union and the Confederacy. 

General P. G. T. Beauregard, who had won fame 
throughout the South hy his conduct at the siege of Fort 
Sumter, was stationed at Manassas with a force of 23,000 
men. His troops were encamped behind the little stream 
of Bull Run, in a narrow wooded valley, from which the 
ground rose on either side in steep hills topped with dense 
woods. 

Brigadier-General Irvin McDowell, a Union leader, 
with a force of about 30,000, proposed to attack the enemy 
in this position. His object was to get possession of the 
railroad and to drive the Confederates over the Rappa- 
hannock River and back toward Richmond. 

To march on the enemy at Manassas, the Union troops 
set out from their temporary headquarters at the village of 
Centerville on Sunday morning, July 21st. The day was 

350 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN 351 

very hot and the recruits were already tired when they 
reached the heights on the north side of Bull Run and 
opened fire at about ten o'clock on the Confederate line. 
]\IcDowell sent heavy masses of infantry to ford the stream 
and attack the Southerners at close quarters. The Con- 
federates fought splendidly, green and unseasoned though 
they were and in spite of their being outnumbered by the 
attacking party. 

The first charge resulted in the giving of a name to 
General Thomas J. Jackson that exactly described the 
man's unyielding courage. Some of the Confederates 
were in full retreat, but as they ran they looked back and 
saw his brigade standing in line calmly awaiting the on- 
coming enemy. His example instantly steadied the panic- 
stricken host, whose general cried out, "Look at Jackson! 
There he stands like a stone wall!" And from that day 
forth the intrepid Southern general was known as "Stone- 
wall" Jackson. 

Hard pressed, the Confederates were forced to draw 
back into the woods, where the battle raged furiously for 
some hours. Steadily the Federal soldiers drove the 
Southerners back, leaving in their wake hundreds of dead 
and wounded men. By three o'clock it looked as though 
the victory was easily on the side of the Union. At that 
very hour, however, a railway train was run into Manassas, 
bringing a large reinforcement of Southerners, all fresh 
and eager for the fray. These new troops, under General 
Joseph E. Johnston, were hurried into action ; and the sur- 
prised Federals, shaken with fatigue and disappointment 
could not withstand their attack. 

The Northern men who had fought so well all day went 
temporarily mad with fright. Their retreat became a 
panic. The road back toward Washington was a choked 
and tangled mass of baggage-wagons, artillery, soldiers, 
and civilians, through which cavalry horses plunged and 



352 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

reared with deadly effect. Nothing could turn or check 
that desperate welter of fear. The Union army did not 
come to itself until it was safe behind the fortifications that 
protected Washington. 

The humiliation in the North at the outcome of the 
battle was equaled only by the rejoicing of the South. 
The Confederate army was quite disorganized by its suc- 
cess ; for many Southerners regarded the war as over, and 
left the front to take up their usual occupations. From 
their defeat at Manassas the people of the North learned 
that the task before them was far more difficult than they 
had supposed; but their determination to crush the rebel- 
lion was in no way lessened. "Having chosen our course,'* 
said President Lincoln, "without guile, and with pure pur- 
pose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward with- 
out fear and with manly hearts." 

Congress at once voted five hundred million dollars, and 
called for half a million volunteers to carry on the war. 
The men of the Union responded splendidly to the call. 

*'The lawyer leaving his ofl5ce and arming, the judge leav- 
ing the court, 

The driver deserting liis wagou in the street, jumping 
down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the 
horses' backs. 

The salesman leaving the store ; the boss, bookkeeper, 
porter, all leaving; 

Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm." 

The North realized at last just how serious an undertak- 
ing was before her, and she rose grandly to meet the emer- 
gency of a great and probably long war. Since General 
McDowell had led the Northern army to defeat, the confi- 
dence of the people in him naturally was shaken. A new 
leader was needed at once and the Government sent for 
General George B. McClellan, who had distinguished him- 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN 353 

self at Rich Mountain in West Virginia, to come and take 
command of the troops around Washington. To the 
forces under his command this new general gave the name 
of "The Army of the Potomac." 

McClellan was a West Point graduate and he had dis- 
tinguished himself by his bravery in the Mexican War. 
He was young and handsome and had a winning person- 
ality that at once appealed to public opinion. He was 
looked upon as the hero of the hour; the newspapers spoke 
of him as "the young Napoleon"; and the entire North 
waited in breathless expectation for him to lead them to 
glorious victory. 

At first McClellan seemed to fulfil his country's ideal 
of him. He proved an excellent organizer ; for during the 
first three months the strength of the forces under him was 
raised to 134,000 men, and this host he drilled, armed and 
equipped with a thoroughness of detail that was astonish- 
ing. "Never perhaps has a finer body of men in all re- 
spects of physique been assembled by any power in the 
world," wrote a correspondent to the Times. "And there 
is no reason why their morale should not be improved so as 
to equal that of the best troops of Europe." 

In November General Scott, who had long served as 
general-in-chief of the United States Army, was at his own 
request relieved of his heavy duties, as he was old and in- 
firm, and iSIcClellan was put in his place. This gave "the 
young Napoleon" control of all the forces of the Union, 
and it was supposed that he would immediately strike a 
crushing blow at the Confederate army. But the adula- 
tion showered upon him had served to make McClellan 
vainglorious. He was content to think himself a great 
leader without doing anything to earn that distinction. 
Month after month went by and still McClellan made no 
move against the rebels. To Lincoln's remonstrances he 
gave first one excuse and then another: His men were 



354 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

not yet ready; the Confederate forces in front of him were 
equal to his own in strength — let them attack. In reality, 
he outnumbered the Confederates three to one, and he let 
slip an opportunity for striking a decisive blow which 
might have changed the whole current of the war. The 
Northerners who so lavishly had provided him w^ith men 
and the means of equipping them grew impatient at his 
delay. They saw too late that, as Lowell put it, "Our 
chicken was no eagle after all." The newspapers changed 
their praise of McClellan to sarcasm : 

"What are you waiting for, George, I pray? 
To scour your cross-belts with fresh pipe-clay? 
To burnish your buttons or brighten your guns? 
Or wait you for May-day and bright spring suns? 
Are you blowing your fingers because they are cold, 
Or catching your breath ere you take a hold? 
Is the mud knee-deep in valley and gorge? 
What are you waiting for, tardy George?" 

And now, for a little, we must leave McClellan and his 
Army of the Potomac to "di'ill and cipher and hammer 
and forge," while we turn to some other phases of those 
early months of civil war. 

When President Lincoln issued his proclamation an- 
nouncing the blockade of the southern coast, Jefferson 
Davis had responded by conferring upon some private ves- 
sels letters of marque : that is, he gave them permission to 
be fitted out with guns so that they might annoy the ship- 
ping of the North. 

This state of affairs brought out proclamations of neu- 
trality from Great Britain and France ; for these countries 
were anxious not to be implicated in the domestic affairs 
of the Americans, although they watched the progress of 
the Civil War with the utmost interest. A breaking up 
of the Union would not greatly have distressed European 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN 855 

Powers; for a divided America was likely to prove a less 
formidable rival than an America consolidated and united. 
The mass of the British nation, however, appreciated the 
reasons which had prompted the North to go to war, and 
sympathized with the Union. But the "sporting instincts" 
of the aristocrats were aroused by the conduct of the South, 
which, though much the weaker party, was engaged in a 
brave fight for liberty. 

After the Southern victory at the battle of Bull Run, 
the governing classes in England believed that the Union 
would never succeed in conquering the Confederacy. 
"Nothing succeeds like success." That initial triumph of 
the South turned the tide of British sympath}'' more fully 
into favor of the Confederacy, despite the fact that Great 
Britain had denounced slavery. 

Friendly relations between the Union and Great Britain 
came to be seriously threatened at the close of the year 
1861 by the capture of two envoys, James M. Mason and 
John Slidell, whom the Confederate Government had dis- 
patched to Europe on board a British merchant-ship. 
This act gave rise to great excitement in England, where 
the stopping of a ship sailing under the British flag by an 
American man-of-war, and the seizing of two men under 
the protection of that flag, was held to be a hostile act. 
People in the United States were glorying in the capture, 
and for a time war between Great Britain and the Union 
seemed imminent. Lincoln's wisdom prevailed, however, 
and on the demand of the British Government, the United 
States reluctantly surrendered the ambassadors and ad- 
mitted that they had been improperly captured. Thus a 
grave danger was averted ; for had the United States been 
forced into war with Great Britain at this time, the Con- 
federacy and the evil of slavery would undoubtedly have 
triumphed. 



CHAPTER LX 

LINCOLN AND LEE 

THERE is a great sameness about war. Carlyle 
wrote, in his history, The French B evolution: 
"Battles ever since Homer's time, when they were 
fighting mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth reading of 
. . . How many wearisome bloody battles does history 
strive to represent!'* The only thing that makes one bat- 
tle more interesting than another, that differentiates war 
from war, is the personality of the leaders. 

In the American Civil War, personality played a great 
and thrilling part. In the North, Lincoln, rugged, virile 
and sublime, held the center of the stage. He was the 
chief actor in the great drama; for on him devolved the 
burden of supplying troops for his generals, ships and 
sailors to enforce a blockade, and money to finance the en- 
terprise of war. His support was excellent: without 
Grant, Sherman, and others of his generals, his endeavors 
could not have culminated in success; but the fact still re- 
mains that the President was the colossus of the war. 
Tlie way in which this ungainly backwoodsman acquired, 
almost instinctively, skill and knowledge in military 
strategy, was one of the most surprising features of his 
leadership. "His letters to generals in the field," says an 
expert, "are those of a master of strateg5\" 

In the first days after his inauguration, Lincoln was be- 
sieged by a crowd of office-seekers unprecedented even in 
the White House. They thronged the stairs and corridors 
of the executive mansion and swarmed around the Presi- 

356 



LINCOLN AND LEE 357 

dent from morning until night. His patience with these 
parasitical beings was remarkable. "You will wear your- 
self out," a friend remonstrated; "let me have these im- 
portunate visitors turned out." "They don't want much," 
Lincoln answered; "thej^ get but little and I must see 
them." The President was, however, no sentimentalist; 
he knew a rogue when he saw one, and a hypocrite suffered 
short shrift at his hands. Colonel Hay once saw Lincoln 
take an office-seeker by the coat-collar, carry him bodily to 
the door, and throw him in a helpless heap outside. He 
showed much tact in his dealings with men. His sense of 
humor helped him as well as his generous sympathy and 
sincere humanity. Some one called him "the one great 
humorist among the rulers of the earth." Certainly this 
laughter-loving, warm-hearted man knew how to make a 
joke serve in place of a reprimand, and his canny way of 
turning a jest to save the feelings of a friend often amused 
others besides himself. Asked, one time, to pass judg- 
ment upon a book submitted to him by an anxious young 
person, the President said gravely that "for those who like 
this sort of thing, it is just the sort of thing they like!" 
and the author went away content. 

Life at the White House during the difficult years of 
Lincoln's presidency, had a character all its own. It was 
a time, if not of gloom, at least of such seriousness that 
only the necessary formal entertainments were given. At 
the state receptions the President was obliged to stand for 
long hours, shaking hands with thousands of people, mur- 
muring some monotonous greeting as they went past him. 
Usually his mind was far away on these occasions, his eyes 
were veiled with thought, but let him recognize a friend 
and his whole demeanor would change : he would greet the 
guest with a hearty hand-grasp and a ringing laugh that 
would make the Blue Room echo with good-will. Most 



358 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the visitors prepared a set phrase to hurl at the Presi- 
dent as they went by him, but unless it was very short they 
were seldom able to deliver it. One night a determined 
gentleman from Buffalo planted himself in front of Lin- 
coln. "Up our way we believe in God and Abraham Lin- 
coln," he said. "My friend," replied the President as he 
shoved him gently along the line, "you are more than half 
right." 

Simple and modest though he was, Lincoln was one of 
the most self-respecting of rulers. Few Presidents have 
been more careful to protect the honor of their office from 
encroachment. His native dignity was like an armor; it 
saved him from anything like presumption or imperti- 
nence. His enemies, of course, loaded him with ridicule ; 
but newspaper abuse did not affect him. "I have endured 
a gi-eat deal of ridicule, without much malice," he once 
wrote to an acquaintance, "and have received, a great deal 
of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it." 

Lincoln was a fair target for lampoons, and his gigantic 
stature and rough-hewn features lent themselves to cari- 
cature. The cartoonists all over the world revelled in his 
length of limb and his shock of strong, ungovernable hair. 
One of the most touching tributes ever paid to him was a 
poem by Tom Taylor, that appeared in Punch, soon after 
the assassination: 

*'You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier. 
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer. 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 

Between the mourners at his head and feet. 
Say, scurril jester, is there room for youf 



LINCOLN AND LEE 359 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen, 

To make me own this kind of princes peer. 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men." 

An unfailing joy to his father and an element of much 
brightness in the White House was Lincoln's youngest son, 
Thomas, or "Tad" as he was usually called. He was a 
merry, lawless little fellow, loved by all who knew him for 
his kindly ways and good-natured fun. He made the ac- 
quaintance of the office-seekers and was the hot champion 
of some of them. He ran in and out of his father's office 
as he pleased, interrupting the gravest labors with his 
bright talk, climbing on to the President's knee or even 
on to his shoulder, where he would often sit perfectly quiet 
while a weighty conference was going on. 

"Tad" was continually busy about something: fishing 
for gold-fish in the fountains of the gardens, organizing 
minstrel shows in the attic of the White House ; it is even 
told of him that he once set up a stand on the august steps 
of the executive mansion and was doing a thriving busi- 
ness, dispensing lemonade at five cents a glass, when the 
President appeared and put an end to that particular en- 
terprise. When "Tad" became so obstreperous that pun- 
ishment was threatened by his mother, he would take 
refuge beside his father's desk, often spending a whole 
evening there and dropping to sleep at last on the floor; 
then the President would pick him up and carry him ten- 
derly to bed. 

Lincoln was an indefatigable worker. The light in his 
office burned late into the night and his meals were taken 
at odd hours because in the press of affairs he would forget 
to eat. His health must have suffered had it not been for 
Mrs. Lincoln's care of him. After a long day, when the 
President had been too busy to go to his meals, and when 



360 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the food sent to him was returned to the dining-room un- 
tasted, Mrs. Lincohi would, herself, carry a tray into her 
husband's cabinet, take away his papers and stay with him 
until he had eaten enough to please her. She was a kind, 
motherly woman, whose first care was the comfort of those 
about her. She spent much time in visiting the camps and 
hospitals of the soldiers near Washington, ministering to 
the ill and wounded. The war was a heavy sorrow to Mrs. 
Lincoln. Her family was divided by it; several of her 
nearest kin were killed in battle, some in the Union, and 
some in the Confederate army. Personally she was de- 
voted to the National cause, but it was bitter for her to see 
her husband bowed down under the sufferings of the 
countr}^ 

As time wore on and the war held on its terrible course, 
none of those who lived through it showed the signs of 
strain more plainly than did the President. He aged rap- 
idly, and although his eyes never lost their underglint of 
laughter, those who knew him said that his smile came to 
be so sad that it moved his friends to tears. The most 
compassionate of men, he had daily to give orders which 
cost thousands of lives. The cry of the widow and orphan 
was always in his ears, yet he never swerved from his duty, 
even when it almost broke his heart to perform it. 

"I believe fully in Lincoln," said Walt Whitman, who 
was a witness of all the agony of the Civil War: "few know 
the rocks and quicksands he had to steer through and over." 

What Lincoln was to the North, Robert Edward Lee 
was to the South. The son of General Henry Lee, known 
during the Revolutionary War as "Light-Horse Harry," 
Robert E. Lee was bom in Virginia on June 19, 1807. 
His father, who was a close friend of Washington's, was 
made Governor of Virginia after the Revolution and 
young Lee was brought up amid the finest society of which 
the United States could boast. He was sent to West 



LINCOLN AND LEE 861 

Point, where he was graduated when he was twenty-two. 
He served under Scott during the Mexican War, winning 
great distinction for his courage and coohiess. In 1852 he 
was made superintendent of the Mihtary Academy at 
West Point and later was appointed colonel of the First 
United States Cavalry. 

Lincoln had great respect for Lee. He saw in him not 
only a man with a splendid record, but a man capable of 
unusual leadership. The President was very conscious of 
his own lack of technical military training, so when the 
war began he offered Lee the active command of the Union 
forces. Lee was unwilling, however, to take part in an 
invasion of the Southern States. The love of the South 
was a part of him ; the bluest blood of Virginia ran in his 
veins and to be untrue to his State seemed to him like 
treason. Right or wrong, Virginia was his to fight for 
and, if necessary, to die for. 

Lee was one of those Southerners who, although a slave- 
owner himself, disliked slavery. He called it "an institu- 
tion of moral and political evil" ; but he did not believe that 
it was a matter for outsiders to meddle with. He main- 
tained that each State had an undoubted right to make 
and carry out its own laws, and that the North had no 
right to dictate to the South ; so he gave up his commission 
in the United States Army, as did many another loyal 
Southerner, and accepted the generalship of the Virginia 
forces. Later he became commander-in-chief of the Con- 
federate armies. "His ability and character made him 
the head and center of the Southern cause," says Professor 
Rhodes. "When a Southerner had conscientious misgiv- 
ings he was reassured by the reflection that any cause win- 
ning the devotion of Lee must be just and holy." 

The Southerners idolized their leader. Lee's soldiers 
asked nothing better than to follow where he led. His 
generalship made it possible for the South to continue the 



362 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

war after all hope of success was over. Always fighting 
against armies larger and better equipped than his own, 
Lee yet managed by sheer genius and ability to maneuver 
his troops in such a way that defeat of the Southern cause 
was long postponed. When at last he was forced to lay 
down his arms the unrepining loyalty with which he ac- 
cepted the ruin of his party reflected honor on the entire 
South. Friends and foes alike acknowledged the purity 
of his motives and his greatness as a general. 



CHAPTER LXI 

THE WAR IN THE WEST 

BY December 1, 1861, six hundred and forty thou- 
sand Northerners had enlisted for the war. The 
North was ready to make every sacrifice in order 
to save the Union. She grudged neither energy nor ex- 
pense in her enterprise. Night and day the foundries 
worked turning out big guns. In the shipyards, where 
gunboats were building, the sound of tlie hammer was 
never still ; and up and down the length and breadth of the 
loyal States, men were armed and drilled for battle, for 
they had heard their countiy's call : 

*'Lay down the axe, fling up the spade, 

Leave on its track the toiling plow; 
The rifle and the bayonet-blade 

For arms like yours were fitter now; 
And let the hands that ply the pen 

Quit the light task, and learn to wield 
The horseman's crooked brand, and rein 

The charger on the battle-field." 

It is true that under McClellan's dilatory generalship 
the army in the East hesitated to attack the Confederates ; 
but the army in the West was busily employed; for the 
Civil War had a continent for its battle-field and cam- 
paigns were going on, simultaneousl}^ in several theaters 
of action. 

One of the aims of the Federal Government was to get 
possession of the Mississippi River. It would be exceed- 

363 



364 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ingly valuable to the Union, both as a highway and as a 
line of defense ; and by holding this great river the North 
would drive a powerful wedge into Confederate territory, 
for the ]Mississippi divided Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana 
from the other States of the Confederacy. The river 
would serve, too, as a base from which the blockade, so well 
established on the Atlantic coast, might be perfected. 

Early in 1862 Ulysses S. Grant, who later became Presi- 
dent, moved against Fort Henry. This was one of a 
series of important posts that marked the Confederate line 
of defense that must be broken before the Union army 
could hope to take the ^lississippi. Fort Henry, on the 
Tennessee River, was easily captured, owing to Grant's 
ability and to the co-operation of a gunboat fleet under 
Commodore Foote. Twelve miles from Fort Henry, on 
the Cumberland River, was another Confederate strong- 
hold. Fort Donelson. It also surrendered, and with it 
fifteen thousand Confederate troops; but this was only 
after a severe battle had been fought in which the Union, 
alone, lost twenty-three hundred men. We are told that 
at Donelson when the Southern General asked Grant for 
terms, the Northerner replied that his terms were embod- 
ied in two words: "Unconditional surrender." U. S. 
being the initials of his name, the resolute General was 
known thenceforth as "Unconditional Surrender Grant.'* 

The loss of Fort Donelson was to the South what Bull 
Run had been to the North; but it was even more bitter, 
for since their comparatively easy victory at ^Manassas the 
Confederates had believed themselves to be invincible, a 
belief that was strengthened by the inactivity of the Army 
of the Potomac. During the early days of disillusion in 
the South, which followed hard upon Grant's successes, 
the Confederate Congress passed an act requiring of all 
white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five 
three years of military service. It was not until about a 



THE WAR IN THE WEST 365 

year later that the North was forced to resort to this com- 
pulsory method of strengthening its army. 

While their double defeat made it necessary for many 
of the Confederates to fall back from Nashville and other 
points of vantage, it enabled Grant to push southward in 
the direction of Corinth, a town in the northern part of 
Mississippi which the Federal authorities coveted because 
it was the junction of several railroad lines. 

The Union troops under Grant numbered between 
thirty and forty thousand men. With this host he was 
resting on Sunday morning, April 6, at Pittsburg Land- 
ing, Tennessee, when he was surprised by a Confederate 
General, Albert Sidney Johnston, who had secretly col- 
lected strong forces for this very attack. Grant's army 
was taken off its guard, for no one was aware that so pow- 
erful an enemy was near at hand. Driven back between 
the Tennessee River and a creek, the Union soldiers fought 
gallantly, but the Confederates pressed them so hard that 
when night came the South seemed in a fair way to win 
the battle of Pittsburg Landing or, as it is more often 
called, the battle of Shiloh, taking its name from a little 
log meeting-house around which centered the most des- 
perate fighting. 

The second day, however, proved fatal to the Confeder- 
ates. General Johnston was killed, and Grant's forces 
were strengthened by the timely arrival of 24,000 fresh 
troops under the leadership of General Buell. The Con- 
federates, exhausted and disheartened, retired from the 
field and withdrew to Corinth. There the Federal army 
attacked them and forced General Beauregard, who took 
over the command after Johnston's death, to evacuate the 
town. 

At Shiloh the loss on both sides was very great. The 
harassed country began to taste to the full the ruthless 
cruelty of war; but neither side was shaken in its resolution 



366 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to fight on. General Grant was severely blamed for hav- 
ing permitted himself to be surprised. Lincohi was even 
requested to have liim removed from his conmiand ; but tlie 
shrewd President shook his head. *'I can't spare that 
man," he said ; "he fights." 

In March, 1862, while Grant had been makincr his wav 
up the Tennessee, another section of the Union army, un- 
der General John Pope, had moved against the Confeder- 
ates who blocked the ^lississippi at Island Xo. 10. This 
island hes opposite the town of Xew ^ladrid, which is on 
the Missouri side of the river, at a point where the stream 
makes a double bend. Island Xo. 10, like the shores on 
either side of it, was strongly fortified. Pope, with about 
twenty thousand men, laid such violent siege to Xew ^la- 
drid that the town was speedily evacuated; but in order 
to capture the island it was necessary to cross below it and 
cut otf its supplies. This was no easy task, because the 
Confederate batteries commanded the chamiel; but by 
digging a canal across the point of land that lay in the 
bend of the ^lississippi, the Union General saw that he 
would be able to get transport-boats below the island. 

The canal was made, but nineteen davs went to the die- 

ft KJ 

ging of it and diu-ing all that time the enemy was strength- 
ening its position. When the new waterway was finally 
ready for use it proved too small for the gunboats, without 
the protection of which the transports were useless. 

Something had to be done at once, and tlie Commander 
of the CaroudoJet determined on a bold plan for helping 
Pope. On the night of April 4th he ran his gunboat 
braveh" past the Confederate batteries. A fearful thun- 
derstorm was raging and the night, pitch dark at one 
moment, was ablaze with hghtning glare the next, "\\1iat 
with the howling of the wind and the shrieking of Con- 
federate shells, the daring little gunboat seemed launched 
into a very inferno ; but she scudded right under the lee of 



THE WAR IX THE WEST 367 

the island, so close to the enemy's guns that their range 
could not be shortened in time to hit her, and when morn- 
ing came she was riding safely at anchor below the island. 

The next night the Pittsburgh, inspired by the daring of 
the Carondolct, followed her example, slipping past the 
enemy unliarmed. With the co-operation of these two 
gunboats. General Pope succeeded in blocking the ap- 
proach to Island Xo. 10 so effectively that the Confeder- 
ates were obliged to surrender it, together with its garrison 
of seven thousand men. 

This victor}', coupled with Grant's achievements, gave 
into Union possession the Mississippi River as far down 
as Vicksburg. 

In the dark fabric of civil war, the heroism of Southern 
women glows jewel-like against the somber pattern of 
liistory. The women of the Xorth were brave; but their 
endurance was not put to such a gigantic strain as that im- 
posed upon their Southern sisters, who, daintily reared and 
used to every luxun*, were suddenly plmiged into want 
and suffering. Conscription robbed them of their natural 
protectors and left them alone to grapple with all the prob- 
lems of life. There was very little money and only scant 
supply of food, as almost ever}i:hing was requisitioned for 
the army ; but with passionate courage, delicate women set 
themselves to unaccustomed tasks, their pride of race help- 
ing them to perform the most menial labor with dignity, 
giving them a moral superiority that was an incalculable 
blessing to them in their dealings with the blacks left in 
their care. 

Plantation after plantation was laid waste as the tide of 
war encroached upon the Confederate States : homes were 
destroyed: women who had been as queens in their own 
right were left destitute. But the great-hearted hospi- 
tality of the South, which is a tradition of the land, did not 
fail in those days of poverty. The doors that were left 



308 STOKY OF THE UNITED STATES 

standing opened wide to the homeless; for a common 
anxiety and an ahnost fanatical devotion to the Southern 
cause made all the South akin in that time of trial. 

The most haughty women made gentle nurses. They 
tended the >vouiided and dying with utter devotion, even 
when their onvu hearts were wrung with anguish. As the 
Mar went on, so few white men were left behind the light- 
ing lines that often the very burial of the slain devolved 
upon the women. The description of the funeral of a 
young captain, killed during the campaign of 18i)'2, is very 
touching. .V little girl streM'cd flowers on the grave, while 

** . . . "women's voices, witli accents soft and kiw. 
Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read 
Over his liallowed dust the ritual of the dead." 

Innumerable incidents descriptive of the gallant bear- 
ing of both Soutliern men and women during the Civil 
AVar have been told, but it may not be out of place to re- 
peat here just one story typical of the more light-hearted 
side of the war. To three beautiful cousins had been eii- 
trusted the making of the tirst three battle-tiags oi the 
Confederacy. These Avere bright squares of scarlet crossed 
with deep blue edged with white, the cross bearing as many 
stars as there were seceded States. The making of the 
flags was a pure labor of love for the girls, who put such 
minute stitches into their work that they were ahnost in- 
visible without a magnifying-glass. Each Hag was edged 
with heavy gold fringe and then sent by special messenger 
to generals at the front. One went to Johnston, anotlier 
to Beauregard, and the third to Earl Van Dorn, who was 
then in command of infantry at Manassas. 

The battle-tlags were received with great enthusiasm by 
the soldiers; they were toasted and cheered again and 
again. "After two years, when Van Dorn had been killed 
in Temiessee," wrote Constance Carv Harrison, the maker 



THE WAR IN THE WEST 369 

of one of the banners, "mine came back to me, tattered and 
storm-stained from lon^ and honorable service in the field. 
But it was only a little while after it had been bestowed 
that there arrived one day at our lodgings in Culpeper a 
huge, bashful Mississippi scout — one of the most daring in 
the army — with the frame of a Hercules and the face of a 
child. He had been bidden to come there by his general, 
he said, to ask if I would not give him an order to fetch 
some cherished object from my dear old home — something 
that would prove to me 'how much they thought of the 
maker of that flagl' A week later I was the astonished 
recipient of a lamented bit of finery left Svithin the lines,* 
a wrap, brought to us by Dillon himself with a beaming 
face. Mounted on a load of fire-wood, he had gone 
through the Union pickets, and while peddling poultry had 
presented himself at the house of my uncle, Dr. Fairfax, 
in Alexandria, whence he carried off his prize in triumph, 
with a letter in its folds telling us how relatives left behind 
longed to be sharing the joys and sorrows of those at large 
in the Confederacy." * 

1 This story is tnken from Tiattlea and Leaders of the Civil War, "Virginia 
Scenes in '61," by Constance Gary Harrison. 



CHAPTER LXII 

DAEK DAYS FOR THE UNIOX 

FOR eight months ]SIcClellan was left to drill his 
superlative army, although his inactivity was 
viewed with growing impatience. At last, how- 
ever, the President could stand his procrastination no 
longer. "If ^IcClellan has no use for the Army of the 
Potomac," he grimly remarked, "I'd like to borrow it"; 
and he issued a peremptorj^ order for an inmiediate move- 
ment against the enemy. 

The soldiers were overjoyed to hear that they were at 
last to be of use, for their general's dilatoriness had greatly 
fretted them. Lincoln desired that a march be made di- 
rectly on Richmond. iMcClellan, however, preferred to 
transport his army, by water, to Fortress ^Monroe. From 
there he wished to advance on the Confederate capital by 
marching along the peninsula that lies between the York 
and James Rivers, which, running parallel, fall into the 
Potomac southeast of Riclmiond. The President con- 
sented to this plan, for he was very himible in regard to 
his own ideas on the subject of militaiy tactics and always 
forbore to press his views upon an expert. 

From the very begimiing ^IcClellan's advance was 
doomed to failure because of his constitutional dislike of 
attacking the foe and of his proneness to let the crucial 
moment shp by unmarked. At the outset he was disheart- 
ened by the fact that part of the troops promised him were 
detained in Washington for the defense of the city. An- 
other disconcerting fact was that the Confederates had dis- 

370 



DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION 371 

covered the Union plans almost as soon as they were made 
and had ordered their movements accordingly. 

The Confederate general, Joseph E. Johnston, who had 
spent the winter near the battle-field of Bull Run, immedi- 
ately retired from that position and hastening to the penin- 
sula threw a long line of entrenchments from Yorktown 
across to a branch of the James ; so that when McClellan 
arrived at Fortress Monroe to lead his army toward Rich- 
mond, he found himself brought to a standstill by the com- 
placent enemy. Now the Confederate strength amounted 
to only about nine thousand three hundred, while McClel- 
lan's forces numbered nearly a hundred thousand. It 
should have been quite a simple matter for the resplendent 
Union army to have broken through the Confederate lines, 
but the overcautious IVIcClellan halted and sent back to 
Washing-ton for reinforcements. "I am of the opinion,'* 
he complained, "that I shall have to fight all the available 
strength of the rebels not far from here." 

After a month of dalliance McClellan received a tele- 
gram from President Lincoln which said, "I think the time 
is near at hand when you must either attack Richmond or 
give up the job." This roused the General to action; but 
lo! when he was ready to train his guns on the enemy — 
he found their trenches empty! The Confederates had 
quietly withdrawn to the nearer neighborhood of Rich- 
mond. ^IcClellan started in pursuit ; but meanwhile Gen- 
eral Stonewall Jackson was at work in the Shenandoah 
Valley, where he had defeated and frightened several 
bodies of Union troops and had so alarmed the authorities 
at Washington, that McDowell, who was in command of 
some Federal forces at Fredericksburg, was ordered not 
to join McClellan before Richmond, as he had expected to 
do, but to remain in the vicinity of the national capital, 
which seemed in danger of being invaded. 

Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, was one of 



372 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the outstanding personalities of the Civil War. This 
"Blue-light Elder," as he was affectionately known among 
his men because of his religious principles, never went into 
battle without a prayer for guidance. He regularly set 
aside a tenth part of his income for the use of the poor; 
yet he believed fervently in the institution of slavery and 
never hesitated to have his own negroes flogged when he 
thought that they deserved it. 

After one of the battles in the Shenandoah Valley, a 
poem, stained with blood, was found on the body of a dead 
soldier. It is called Stonewall Jackson's Way, and in 
some of its uncouth verses it gives a vivid picture of Lee's 
most famous general: 

"Come, stack arms, men ! Pile on the rails, 
Stir up the camp-fire bright! 
No growling if the canteen fails, 
We'll make a roaring night. 
Here Shenandoah brawls along. 
There burly Blue Ridge echoes strong. 
To swell the brigade's rousing song 
Of 'Stonewall Jackson's way.' 

We see him now — the queer slouched hat 
Cocked o'er his eye askew ; 
The shrewd, dry smile ; the speech so pat ; 
So calm, so blunt, so true. 

• • • • • 

Silence ! Ground arms ! Kneel all ! Caps off ! 

Old Blue Light's goin' to pray. 

Strangle the fool that dares to scoff ! 

Attention! It's his way — 

Appealing from his native sod, 

In forma pauperis to God 

*Lay bare Thine arm ; stretch forth Thy rod ! — 

Amen!' That's 'Stonewall's way.' 



DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION 373 

He's in the saddle now. Fall in ! 

Steady ! the whole brigade ! 

Hill's at the ford, cut off; we'll win 

His way out, ball and blade ! 

What matter if our shoes are torn? 

'Quick step ! We're with him before the morn !' 

That's 'Stonewall Jackson's way.' " 

Jackson was a West Point man, and before the war he 
was a professor in the Virginia Mihtary Institute. He 
entered the Confederate service at the beginning of hos- 
tilities and very soon proved his greatness as a leader. 
His career was cut short, for he was accidentally shot by 
his own men at Chancellorsville ; but that did not happen 
until his name had become a terror to the North and a 
glory to the South. 

McClellan, as he was bound to do, moved toward Rich- 
mond and on the 31st of May, 1862, the Union and Con- 
federate armies met five miles from the fortifications of 
the Confederate capital, in the neighborhood of Seven 
Pines and Fair Oaks. A part of the Union army had 
been placed in a faulty position, that enabled the enemy 
to fall upon it in superior strength. A battle of great 
f rightfulness was fought; for to the usual horrors of war 
were added the danger from a river in flood, and the hard- 
ships of fighting in a heavy rain with mud knee-deep on 
the battle-field. One of the bridges over the Chickahom- 
iny River was washed away and the other was barely pass- 
able, and thus it was that two of McClellan's army corps, 
which formed the left wing, were cut off from the main 
army upon the other shore and left to sustain the attack 
of the Confederates alone. 

The battle undoubtedly would have proved fatal to the 
Unionists had it not been for the action of General Sum- 
ner, who managed to get his corps across the one remain- 
ing and partly submerged bridge. His arrival saved the 



374 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

left wing from complete disaster; but it did not help them 
to win a victory. There were no decisive results of the 
battle on either side, although five thousand Federals and 
six thousand Confederates were lost. General Johnston 
was seriously wounded, and Robert E. Lee succeeded him 
in chief command of the Confederate army. He sum- 
moned Jackson to his aid, and that general slipped away 
from the Shenandoah Valley and secretly brought his force 
down by rail to help Lee in the struggle against !McClellan. 

Blow upon blow the Confederates now struck against 
the Union forces. A series of battles kno^\ii as the Seven 
Days' Fight (June 26 to July 2, 1862) resulted in the 
withdrawal of the splendid Army of the Potomac, the men 
burning with shame and humiliation. They begged to be 
allowed to stay and "fight it out"; but McClellan, still 
under the erroneous belief that the Confederate forces were 
much greater than his own, would not rest until he lay 
safely sheltered by the gunboats on the James River. It 
is said that he conducted the retreat with much skill; but 
that fact was overlooked in the disgust and disappointment 
felt by the country at this inglorious ending to the cam- 
paign. Fifteen thousand men were lost to no purpose; 
and the Confederates were strengthened in their belief in 
ultimate victory. 

Poor JNIcClellan, shorn of most of his heroic luster, 
sulked like a school-boy. Altogether the gloom that was 
felt in the Xorth was greater than that which prevailed 
after the battle of Bull Run. Charles Darwin's words, 
"Good God! What will be the end?" found echo in many 
hearts. Lincoln grew haggard with anxiety; but he only 
clenched his fist and said: "I expect to maintain this con- 
test until successful, or till I die or am conquered, or my 
term of office expires, or Congress or the country forsakes 
me." He called for three hundred thousand more men, to 
serve for three years, and his determination found response 



DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION 375 

in the upwelling faith of the people. Somebody wrote a 
rousmg song that helped to raise the spirits of the North: 

"We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more, 
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom." 

A new army was made up and John Pope, whose suc- 
cess at Island No. 10 had gained him a reputation, was 
summoned from the West to command it. 

General Halleck, another Western hero, was also or- 
dered to Washington as commander-in-chief; but he 
proved timid and inefficient, although he was a help to 
Lincoln as an authority on the technique of war. The 
truth is that the Northern generals, at this time, were none 
of them equal to the Southern leaders, and the Confederate 
army had the great advantage of working in harmony, 
whereas in the North the army was a hotbed of jealousy 
and confusion. 

Lee had already gained the love and confidence of the 
South. He was all-powerful in military affairs, and as 
soon as he was relieved from danger at Richmond he as- 
sumed the offensive and with his whole force marched 
against Pope, who was with the Federal troops near the 
old battle-field of Bull Run. There, on August 29 and 
30, 1862, was fought the second battle of Manassas, which 
proved a sorry defeat for the Union. 

Pope was no more equal to withstanding a Confederate 
attack than his predecessor had been. Misunderstandings 
between him and some of his corps-commanders, together 
with the failure of McClellan to reinforce him at a critical 
moment, resulted disastrously. The Union troops fought 
splendidly, but their leaders were out-maneuvered by the 
enemy and obliged to fall back toward Washington, just 
as they had been forced to do the year before. 

yhe anger and chagrin felt by the Northern people over 



876 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

McClellan's failure and Pope's disaster found voice in a 
poem entitled Wanted: A Man, wTitten by Edmund 
Clarence Stedman. 

"Back from the trebly crimsoned field 

Terrible words are thunder-tossed, 
Full of the wrath that will not yield, 

Full of revenge for battles lostl 
Hark to their echo, as it crossed 

The Capital, making faces wan: 
End this murderous holocaust; 

Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN ! 

No leader to shirk the boasting foe 

And to march and countermarch our brave, 
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low. 

And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave ; 
Nor another, whose fatal banners wave 

Aye in disaster's shameful van; 
Nor another to bluster, and lie, and rave — 

Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN 1" 

The President was so much impressed with this poem 
that he read it to his cabinet. But the task of finding "a 
MAN" was a difficult one; for so many of the tried leaders 
who had served the United States before the war were now 
fighting on the Confederate side, and the new men in the 
Union army had not had time to prove their worth. In 
desperation Lincoln again turned to ^IcClellan, who, al- 
though he had failed utterly as a leader, was kno^Mi to be 
a born organizer. "I must have JNIcClellan to reorganize 
the army and bring it out of chaos," said the President; 
so McClellan was reinstated, much to the delight of the 
Army of the Potomac and most of its leaders, with whom 
the General was popular in spite of his acknowledged 
faults. 



DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION 377 

To McClellan's honor be it said, he restored to order 
and harmony the demoralized army, and by his real genius 
and resource justified Lincoln's estimate of him. 



CHAPTER LXIII 



THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM. SOjME NAVAL INCIDENTS OF 

THE CIVIL WAR 



G 



ENERAL LEE had a great scheme for follow- 
ing up his success at Bull Run by driving the 

Northerners out of Maryland and adding that 

border State to the Confederacy. Accordingly he sent 
Stonewall Jackson with a force against Harper's Ferry, 
which was captured together with eleven thousand Union 
soldiers. Lee, with about 41,000 men, then pushed on into 
^laryland, and on September 16, 1862, he encountered 
McClellan, with 87,000 troops, on the banks of the An- 
tietam Creek, near Sharpsburg. Here took place one of 
the fiercest encounters of the war, lasting for two daj^s. 
The Federal casualties alone amounted to over twelve 
thousand, while the list of Confederate dead and wounded 
brought the losses of both sides up to twenty-two thou- 
sand! McClellan succeeded, because of his numerically 
superior army, in driving Lee back across the Potomac, 
and in bringing the invasion of Maryland to an abrupt 
end. But, McClellan-like, he stopped when he had done 
so much. Instead of following up his advantage and end- 
ing the war, he hung back and allowed the Confederate 
army to slip away into safety. 

^Vhen expostulations reached him from Washington, 
and when the President urgently "suggested" that he 
should push forward and take Richmond before the Con- 
federates had time to collect and reorganize their forces, 
McClellan replied that he had all he could do to reinforce 

378 



THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM 379 

and reorganize his own army, and to repair the wastages of 
the campaign. 

This seemed a poor excuse to those in authority, who 
knew that he had 100,000 men ready for duty under his 
immediate command, and as many more subject to his 
orders between Sharpsburg and Washington. Once 
again "Tardy George" lost a great opportunity and bit- 
terly disappointed the Union. His attitude of mind is 
difficult to understand; for McClellan was no personal 
coward. At the battle of Antietam he rode backward and 
forward encouraging his men. He was perfectly cool and 
collected under fire; and very handsome he looked, 
mounted on his famous black horse "Daniel Webster," 
which was loiown in the army as "that devil Dan." He 
seemed every inch a general ; but the poor man was always 
haunted by the fear of defeat, and never inspired by the 
hope of victory. This morbid attitude of mind worked to 
his own disgrace as well as to the distress of the country; 
for earty in November he was relieved of his command of 
the Army of the Potomac and Major-General Ambrose 
E. Burnside was put in his place. 

After the Peninsular campaign, when McClellan had 
been accused of achieving nothing but failure, he com- 
plained that he failed because the navy had rendered him 
no assistance. The fact was that the Union navy had all 
it could attend to without helping the land forces. There 
was the blockade to be enforced, the exciting operations on 
the Mississippi to be carried out and — at the time when 
]McClellan was getting ready to transport his army to the 
peninsula — a great battle to be fought in the waters of 
Hampton Roads, near Fortress Monroe. 

"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," the 
old adage tells us, but during the Civil War the Soutli- 
erners did something quite as remarkable, for they impro- 
vised effective fighting ships out of next to nothing. They 



380 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

were hard pressed for a navy, having no ships designed for 
war, and their poverty in all the materials necessarj- for 
building lighting ships M'as almost unbelievable. There 
was so little iron in the South that an appeal had to be 
made for old pots and pans to melt down, and we are told 
that despite the military importance of railroads rails were 
torn up to make armor for the Confederate ships. 

At the very beginning of the war the Southerners had 
seized the Norfolk Na-vy Yard; but without great advan- 
tage to themselves, for, rather than let good ships fall into 
Confederate possession, the Union authorities had de- 
stroyed them. The Menimac, which had been the pride 
of the United States Navy, was sunk in the James River. 
But the undaunted Southerners raised the frio-ate, cut her 
down, built on her deck a superstructure which "looked like 
the roof of a house with the eaves under water," and 
sheathed her with iron plates. The "roof" they covered 
with iron rails. Beneath the water-line they fastened to 
her prow an ironclad projection, which might be used to 
ram an enemy ship; then arming her with guns of large 
size thej^ rechristened her the Virginia and sent her — with 
an escort of five small wooden vessels — do^v^lstream to 
meet the Northern fleet that lay guarding the mouth of 
the James. The battle which ensued was one of the most 
interesting of the Civil War. It took place on the 8th 
and 9th of ]March, 1862. 

As she steamed grimly ahead, the Virginias appearance 
was awe-inspiring, for her like had never been seen afloat. 
When she drew near the enemy not a man was to be de- 
scried upon her decks. The Union frigates greeted her 
with a volley of shot, which bounced harmlessly from her 
armored sides. Steering straight for the Cumberland, the 
Virginia drove her armed prow into the Federal vessel, 
making a long gash in the Cumberland's side. The 



THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM 381 

wooden timbers of the Federal ship might as well have 
been egg-shells, so useless were they in resisting the Con- 
federate ram. The frigate filled with water and went 
down, carrying a hundred men of her gallant crew to their 
death. 

The Virginia next trained her guns on the Congress, 
which was aground and able to offer but little resistance. 
For a time the Union frigate pluckily sustained the rain 
of Confederate shell, but at last she surrendered, having 
lost heavily in dead and wounded. Jubilantly the Vi?'- 
ginia drew away from her scene of triumph, for night was 
approaching. But the next morning, which chanced to 
be a Sunday, she reappeared, anxious to finish the destruc- 
tion of the Union fleet and then to sail up the Potomac and 
attack the city of Washington. The Minnesota was to 
be the Virginians first victim; but her Federal commander 
had run her aground, to be out of reach of the stabbing 
prow. In front of where she wallowed in the mud was a 
mysterious structure that looked to the astonished South- 
erners like "a cheese-box on a raft." This proved to be 
the Monitor, a new type of fighting ship (invented by 
Captain John Ericsson) which had arrived from New 
York during the night. 

The Monitor's deck was only just above the water and 
supported nothing but a revolving iron turret in which 
were placed two very large guns that could be fired from 
any direction. This curious little vessel successfully de- 
fended the Minnesota, hurling enough shot at the Virginia 
to have sunk an entire wooden navy. The Confederate 
ship responded with a perfect storm of shell, and for four 
hours the two ironclads battered away at each other with- 
out any particular result. In vain the Virginia tried to 
run down her little adversary ; she struck her a heavy blow, 
but the Monitor suffered no serious damage. Finally the 



382 STORY OF. THE UNITED STATES 

two antagonists separated without decisive victory on 
either side. They had fought the first battle between 
armored vessels in the world's history. 

The Virginia retired up the James River. Her plan 
for demolishing the Union fleet w^as frustrated and her 
hope of attacking Washington was foiled, so perhaps the 
victory was to the Union and to the 3Ionitor in particular. 
But the great importance of the battle lies in its effect on 
the naval warfare of the world. INIen saw that the day of 
wooden battleships was forever at an end ; that the armored 
ship was the battleship of the future. European govern- 
ments all set themselves to reconstructing their navies ac- 
cording to this new light; and the United States got 
seventy-five ironclads ready for service before the end of 
the next year. 

The submarine, another instrument of naval warfare 
which was destined to be quite as important as the ironclad, 
was brought to the world's notice during the American 
Civil War. The great warships belonging to the Union 
were known as Goliaths, and for defense against these 
giants, the Confederates built submersible boats which they 
called Davids. These were double-ended vessels, driven 
by steam and sunk until the tops were awash and only the 
funnels showed above the water. Even the funnels could 
be telescoped so that they were scarcely visible. In a 
state of perfection these underwater boats w^ould have been 
a grave menace to the Union navy; but as they were, they 
proved dangerous chiefl}^ to their own crews, for they had 
a proneness to dive unexpectedly, which caused the death 
of many a gallant Southerner. They were apt, also, to 
be sunk by a hea^'y wave when their hatches were open; 
while to close the hatches meant deatli to their crews from 
lack of air. On the whole, therefore, the Davids did not 
seriously annoy their enemy, although their "hveliness" 
kept the Federal fleet anxiously alert. But to us they 



THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM 383 

are interesting as the progenitors of the present day sub- 
marines, and because some of them carried at the bow a 
spar having a copper case containing one hundred and 
thirty-four pounds of gunpowder with a chemical fuse — 
the forerunner of the modern torpedo. 

In the West the Union owed most of its successes to the 
combined efforts of the navy and the land forces. It was 
the "web-feet of the nation," as Lincoln called the gun- 
boats that helped to put the North in control of the upper 
Tilississippi. In April, 1862, a fleet of Federal gunboats 
bombarded the forts below New Orleans, in the hope of 
gaining the lower part of the great river for the Union. 
For five days the firing went on almost continuously ; but 
the Confederates held out. Admiral Farragut, in charge 
of the Federal fleet, saw that he might hammer away in- 
definitely without making much impression on the forts. 
He therefore decided to run his gunboats past them and 
to attack New Orleans. 

To frustrate Farragut's plan, the Southerners collected 
a haphazard lot of ships to oppose his advance, but the 
Admiral's splendid fleet dealt successfully with them all. 
He cleverly avoided the fire-rafts and burning steamboats 
loaded with cotton which were dispatched against his fleet; 
and before it could do any serious damage, he evaded an 
ironclad ram named the Manassas, which was the pride 
of the enemy. His progress was a fight every inch of the 
way, but he finally arrived triumphantly in front of New 
Orleans. 

Having counted upon the forts for protection, the city 
was undefended and obliged to surrender. Farragut 
landed a party of marines, who pulled down the Confed- 
erate flag and hoisted the Union flag in its stead. Thus 
quietly New Orleans was taken, and the lower Mississippi, 
from the sea to Baton Rouge, was brought under the con- 
trol of the Union Government. 



CHAPTER LXIV 

THE SLATES ARE DECLARED FREE. SOZNIE COXEEDER-\TE 

SUCCESSES 

'^United States ! the ages plead 
Present and past in undersong: 
Go put jour creed into 30ur deed, 
Xor speak with double tongue. 

"For sea and land don't understand, 
Xor skies without a frown 
See rights for which the one hand fights 
Bj the other cloven down. 

'*For He that worketh high and wise 
Xor pauses in His plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 
Ere freedom out of man." 

Emebsox. 

LIXCOLX once said, **If slavery is not wrong, 
nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I 
did not so think and feel, and yet I have never 
understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an mi- 
restricted right to act officially upon this judgment and 
feeling." 

The President thought it was his tirst duty to save the 
Union. "If I could save the Union without freeing any 
slaves, I would do it/' he said : "if I could save it by freeing 
all the slaves, I would do it: and if I could save it freeing 
some and leaving others alone. I would do it." 

SS4 



THE SLAVES ARE DECLARED FREE 385 

^Mien the people of the North clamored for him to take 
a definite step to abolish slavery, he waited to find out just 
which was the wisest way to set about it. He saw that 
nothing must be done which would estrange the Slave 
States that had remained loyal to the L'nion, and he saw, 
too, that if he made any move to free the slaves while the 
Federal troops were meeting with constant reverses in 
battle, his action might be misinterpreted as a scheme to 
get more fighting men for the L^nion ; for the slaves were 
loyal subjects of the Union and once free they would fight 
for its cause, which was their cause. Lincoln knew, how- 
ever, that the time was not far distant when it would be- 
come a military necessity to free the negroes, because they 
were growing the food for the Confederate soldiers and 
acting as teamsters and laborers in the army service. 
"We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued," he 
said. 

Taking advantage, therefore, of the Federal success at 
Antietam the President issued a declaration calling on the 
revolted States to return to their allegiance before the fol- 
lowing January ; otherwise their slaves would be declared 
free men. 

Xo State returned to the L^nion and so the tlireatened 
Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. Lincoln 
prepared the unportant docimient himself, and then read 
it aloud to the members of his Cabinet, characteristically 
remarking, "I have got you together to hear what I have 
written down. I do not wish your advice about the main 
matter; for that I have determined for myself." He then 
read: "I do order and declare that all persons held as 
slaves" (in the States or any part of the States resistmg 
the United States Government) "are and henceforward 
shall be free . . ." The Proclamation ended with these 
words: "L^pon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice warranted by the Constitution upon mihtarj- neces- 



386 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and 
the gracious favor of Ahnighty God." 

This Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most im- 
portant state papers on record; for not only did it give 
freedom to over tlu-ee million human beings, but it em- 
bodied the triumphant expression of the Northern dislike 
of slavery. The Proclamation did not apply to the Slave 
States which had not seceded, so the final blow was not 
given to slaverj'' throughout the country until 1865, when 
the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibit- 
ing men to own slaves in any part of the United States, 
was passed. But the Proclamation of Januarj^ 1st fore- 
told the day when all men should truly be "free and equal," 
and as soon as it was made public the bells of the North 
pealed forth joyfully. In the churches people gave 
thanks to God for their freedom from the burden of an 
intolerable shame, for 

". . . laws of changeless justice bind 
Oppressor with oppressed." 

The great cities of the East and the infant settlements 
of the West rejoiced together: 

"It is done ! 
Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel ! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town! 

Ring, O bells ! 
Every stroke exulting tells 
Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long that all may hear, 

Ring for ever}^ listening ear 
Of Eternity and time 1 



THE SLAVES ARE DECLARED FREE 387 

English critics who were interested spectators of the 
conflict in America predicted an immediate insurrection of 
the slaves as an outcome of the Proclamation ; but nothing 
of the sort took place. Like the feet of the Chinese 
women, the spirits of the negroes had been bound for gen- 
erations. It would take years of freedom to make them 
understand the true meaning of liberty; although they 
were grateful for just as much as they could understand. 
They knew that they were not to be bought and sold any 
longer and in their own way they rejoiced: 

"O, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come 

To set de people free : 
An' Massa tink it day ob doom, 

An' we ob jubilee — 
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves 

He jus' as 'trong as den ; 
He say de word: we las' night slaves ; 

Today, de Lord's free men. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We'll hab de rice an' corn ; 
O, nebber you fear, if nebber you hear 

De driver blow his horn." 

To be sure, many of the negroes joined the Federal 
army, where they knev/ they were safe from the compul- 
sion of masters who would not admit their freedom. By 
the end of the year 1863, there were in the United States 
military service 100,000 men who had been slaves; about 
one-half of this number actually bore arms in the ranks. 
But for the most part the negroes remained quietly at work 
on the plantations. Some very touching stories are told of 
the older slaves who would not accept their freedom, but 
clung to their "Massa," or "OF Miss," rendering faithful 
service until the day of their death. 



388 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Tlie haughty Southerners deeply resented the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation. It undermined their most cher- 
ished institution. It humiliated them in their own eyes, 
by putting their servants on an equality with themselves, 
and it struck at the roots of their prosperity by depriving 
them of their "property." Lincoln had foreseen this last 
complication and he had done all in his power to avert it 
by offering compensation to the slave-owners. "The peo- 
ple of the South are no more responsible for the original 
introduction of this property (property in slaves) than 
are the people of the North," he said; "and when it is 
remembered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and 
sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not 
be quite safe to say that the South has been more re- 
sponsible than the North for its continuance. If, then, 
for a common object, this propertj^ is to be sacrificed, is it 
not just that it be done at a common charge?" But the 
pride of the Southern people made them refuse the com- 
pensation offered them by President Lincoln and his Con- 
gress. They considered it an impertinence on the part 
of the United States to make the suggestion. In their 
strong behef in "States' Rights," they were unwilling to 
admit that the Government at Washington had authority 
to interfere with any of their institutions. They were not 
fighting merely to retain their slaves; they were willing 
of their own accord to abolish slavery, if necessary, pro- 
vided the Confederate States of America be recognized. 

A few weeks before the Emancipation Proclamation was 
issued, General Burnside was put in command of the im- 
fortunate Army of the Potomac. He was a West Point 
man, but for some years before the war he had devoted 
himself to civil pursuits. His career was unmarked by 
any particular military genius, but his training, his hand- 
some personal appearance, and his modest estimate of 
himself — so at variance with ^IcClellan's vainglory — made 



THE SLAVES ARE DECLARED FREE 389 

him the hope of the Union. Burnside, however, doubted 
his o^vTi ability. Twice he had refused to accept the re- 
sponsibility of leadership now thrust upon him in such a 
way that he could not decline it. 

Ordered to attack the Confederates and advance on 
Richmond, the unhappy General moved his army south- 
ward until he reached the banks of the Rappahannock, 
opposite the little town of Fredericksburg. There he was 
obliged to wait for twenty days until pontoons arrived 
with which he could bridge the river. Lee, in the mean- 
time, strengthened his position on the heights behind 
Fredericksburg; so that when Burnside finally began his 
attack, the Confederates were snug behind almost impreg- 
nable fortifications. The Union soldiers found the cross- 
ing of the river to be a difficult undertaking, for they were 
exposed to the continuous fire of some enemy sharpshooters 
who were concealed within the houses of Fredericksburg. 
Once landed, however, the Federalists dashed bravely for- 
ward to the assault. 

Very debonair they looked, in their smart uniforms with 
their buttons and buckles gleaming in the sun; a remark- 
able contrast to the Confederate soldiers in their soiled 
gray, with their torn slouched hats and their ragged boots 
— or no boots at all! Yet that lusty tide of Union man- 
hood was borne back time and again by Lee's scarecrow 
army. It was a wonderful battle, but such valor on both 
sides meant unspeakable carnage. That dreadful 13th of 
December might well have made America proud of her 
splendid fighting sons, had it left her time to spare from 
her mourning! The Federals were repulsed after they 
had lost thirteen thousand men. The Confederates lost 
only four thousand, owing to the shelter provided by their 
fortifications. 

Burnside went nearly mad with grief over the "horror 
of Fredericksburg." "Oh, those men! Those men over 



390 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

there!" he moaned as he pointed across the river to where 
lay the dead and wounded that such a short time before 
had been the flower of the army. "I am thinking of them 
all the time." The poor General took upon himself the 
responsibility and blame for the disaster, while he gave his 
troops full credit for their great courage and endurance. 
Perhaps no general placed as Burnside was could have ac- 
quitted himself better. He failed because he attempted 
the impossible. In January he handed his resignation to 
the President, who accepted it and appointed as his suc- 
cessor General Joseph Hooker. 

The Southerners were naturally amused by the frequent 
changes in Union leadership. Lee, who was a keen judge 
of men, was able to gage the worth of the generals op- 
posed to him with unerring accuracy; but he complained 
that he was kept busy *'sizing up" new men. "I fear they 
may continue to make these changes till they find some 
one I don't imderstand," he remarked whimsically; and 
added, "I was sorry to part with McClellan; we always 
understood each other so well." No one realized better 
than did General Lee that 

"Fortune's greatest gift to man 
Is personality alone." 

As yet he had never particularly feared his adversary, be- 
cause he knew himself to be the superior of any Federal 
general whom the Union had sent against him. 

The last man, "Fighting Joe" Hooker, was no better 
than his predecessors. He succeeded, however, in getting 
the army into shape, and with 130,000 men he set out upon 
the Chancellorsville campaign. Lee met him with 60,000 
men; and so cleverly did the Southern general maneuver 
his troops that the Federalists were overcome by an army 
of less than half their size and Hooker was forced to re- 



THE SLAVES ARE DECLARED FREE 391 

treat with a loss of seventeen thousand men. But the 
Confederates paid a dear price for their victory. They 
had thirteen thousand casualties, which they could ill af- 
ford, and they suffered an irreparable loss in the death of 
Stonew^all Jackson. 

Jackson had gone to reconnoiter the enemy's position 
and was returning toward his own lines with his staff, 
when a North Carolina regiment mistook the approaching 
horsemen for Union cavalrymen and fired upon them. 
Jackson fell from his horse, shot through the left arm and 
the right hand. His men quickly got him on to a stretcher 
to carry him to safety; but one of the bearers was shot 
down and as he fell the wounded general was thrown 
heavily to the ground. The sound of the firing had turned 
the attention of the enemy to that part of the field where 
Jackson lay helpless, and for some time he was left there 
with cannon playing over him. When his men learned 
what had happened, they rushed out and carried him 
through the hailstorm of fire into the shelter of a wood. 
"If I live," he said, "it will be for the best, and if I die it 
will be for the best. God knows and directs all things." 
He died a few days after the battle. 



CHAPTER LXV 

GETTYSBUEG 

THERE was a man named Charles Blondin who 
amazed the world by crossing Niagara Falls on a 
tight rope. During the course of this perform- 
ance he carried a man on his back, cooked an omelette, and 
wheeled a barrow. The papers were full of Blondin's ex- 
ploits, and it is not surprising that Lincoln saw in this 
man, who kept his balance imder most trying circmn- 
stances, a parallel to the United States Government dur- 
ing the days of failure and discouragement that followed 
upon the repeated defeats of the Union army. The Presi- 
dent showed remarkable patience in dealing with the "arm- 
chair critics" who hurried to Washington from all parts 
of the country to point out the mistakes of the Govern- 
ment. Confronted in the White House, one day, by some 
excited Westerners, Lincoln listened quietly to what they 
had to say and then replied : 

"Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worthi 
was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin 
to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you 
shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him, 'Blondin, 
stand up a little straighter — Blondin, stoop a little more — 
go a little faster — lean a little more to tlie north — lean a 
little more to the south' ? No, you would hold your breath 
as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he 
was safe over. The Government officials are carrying an 
inmiense weight. L"^ntold treasures are in their hands. 
They are doing the very best they can. Don't badger 
them. Keep silence, and we'll get you safe across." 

392 



GETTYSBURG 393 

But in spite of his faith in ultimate victory, even Lincoln 
was discouraged after the retreat from Chancellorsville, 
and it was with a heav}' heart that he relieved Hooker from 
the command of the Army of the Potomac and appointed 
General George Gordon ^leade in his stead. Meade was 
a quiet, methodical man, who had done good work in the 
Mexican War. He was every inch a soldier, and from 
the businesslike way in which he applied himself to the 
duties of his responsible position, it seemed probable that 
the Union had at last hit upon a leader whom Lee might 
have some difficulty in ''understanding." 

Elated over their continued victories, the Confederates 
were intent on invading Northern territoiy. They were 
quite justified in the belief that their arms were invincible, 
for had they not time and again overcome forces vastlj?^ 
larger than their own? They hoped that one more de- 
cisive battle would end the war, and win recognition of the 
Confederate States of America; but to make this battle 
reflect all possible glory on the South, it must be fought 
in the enemy's countrJ^ Lee therefore crossed the Po- 
tomac with his veterans, and pushed forward into Penn- 
sylvania, with Harrisburg for his objective point. Meade 
set out to head him off; and the foremost divisions of the 
two armies came together, on July 1, 1863, near the little 
village of Gettysburg. 

Behind beautiful Gettysbm'g there lies a hill shaped 
like a gigantic fish-hook and known as Cemetery Ridge. 
Where the point of the hook should be, the ridge ends in 
Culp's Hill, and the end of the shank is guarded by hills 
called the Round Tops. INIeade drew up his troops on 
this natural rampart, while Lee established his forces on 
Seminary Ridge, anotlier of nature's earthworks, that runs 
opposite and parallel to Cemetery Ridge. Ensconced in 
these strong positions the combatants began a three days' 
battle. 



394 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

At first the Confederates held the advantage. Part of 
the Federal line was broken and the Confederates man- 
aged to get a foothold on the slope of Culp's Hill; so that 
when the evening of the second day came Lee reviewed 
events with content. His losses had been small, while 
the Federals had been seriously weakened. Another day 
of fighting, he thought, would complete his success and 
give the South undisputed possession of the richest of the 
Northern States. But for once Lee had miscalculated: 
the strength of his opponent was by no means exhausted. 
To be sure, ^leade had lost 20,000 men, or over one-fifth 
of his army, but his troops still outnumbered Lee's and he 
had no intention of giving up. He called his corps com- 
manders together for a council of war and they all voted to 
"stay and fight it out"; because they realized that upon 
this battle hung the fate, not only of Pennsylvania, but of 
the Union. 

jMeade went quietly to work to strengthen the weak 
points in his defense, and when July 3rd dawned in all the 
glory of its summer beauty a new determination seemed 
to pervade the Union lines. Lee, who was as sensitive as 
an old war horse to the atmosphere of battle, understood 
that the enemy would fight that day as they had never 
fought before. A tense silence brooded over the two 
armies : it was the quiet that foretells a storm. Suddenly 
there sounded the cough and shriek of a Confederate shell. 
This was the signal for a hundi-ed and fifty Confederate 
guns to open fire on the Union lines. They were an- 
swered in thunder-tones by the Federal artillery, and for 
three hours the valley was swept by a crashing cross-fire 
which had no decisive results, although men were mown 
down on either side like worthless stubble, and the once 
peaceful Gettysburg was blackened and disfigured by the 
ugly scars of battle. 

"Mother," wrote Walt Whitman in a letter full of an- 



GETTYSBURG 395 

guish and pity, "one's heart grows sick of war, after all, 
when you see what it really is. . . . It seems to me like 
a great slaughter-house and the men mutually butchering 
each other." 

Impatient for results, Lee sent fifteen thousand of his 
soldiers, under the leadership of Pickett, to charge the 
Union line. Gallantly they marched down the hill and 
crossed the open valley, nearly a mile wide. Their ad- 
vance was met by a steady rain of shells from Meade's bat- 
teries, which plowed great furrows through their ranks; 
but with the calm of tried soldiers the Confederates closed 
up and moved steadily forward to almost certain death. 
Lee watched them from his post on Seminary Hill with the 
pride that only a commander knows when he sees his or- 
ders being bravely carried out. He saw them move up the 
opposite height to the low stone wall that sheltered the 
Federals; for a second the Confederate flag seemed to flut- 
ter over the enemy's position, and then a cloud of smoke 
blotted it out. When the smoke lifted the Confederates 
were being di'iven down the hill. Stumbling over their 
fallen comrades, they still fought desperately ; but IMeade's 
men pressed them relentlessly back, until it was plain that 
they had done their utmost — and had failed. The battle 
was lost to the South. The Union was victorious. 

The next day Lee began his retreat into Virginia. It 
was a sad day for Southern hopes, for it meant the end of 
Confederate invasion of the North. The battle-field of 
Gettysburg was strewn with dead and wounded. Lee's 
army had lost 20,000 men and JNIeade's 23,000. The gut- 
ters of the little town literally ran with blood, and the 
sights and the suffering were so awful that it might have 
been there that the poet Whitman exclaimed, ''When I see 
what well men and sick men and mangled men endure — 
it seems to me I can be satisfied and happy henceforward if 
I can get one meal a day." Every house, every barn, 



396 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

every outbuilding was turned into a hospital, and even the 
corn-cribs were used to shelter the wounded. 

A few months after Gettysburg, part of the battle-field 
was consecrated as a national cemetery where were buried 
the brave men who had died in their country's cause. 
President Lincoln took part in the ceremony of consecra- 
tion and the speech he made that day ranks as one of the 
great orations of all time. It is great from a literary point 
of view, but its peculiar beauty lies in the pure purpose it 
expresses. In conclusion, Lincoln said: 

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re- 
maining for us, that from these honored dead we may take in- 
creased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have 
a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Their victory at Gettysburg put fresh heart into the 
Northern people. The news of Meade's success flashed 
over the wires on the 4th of July, bringing to the anni- 
versary of Independence Day a new significance and a 
deeper meaning. 

On the outskirts of Richmond, the Confederate capital, 
there stood a huge, shapeless building which once had been 
a tobacco factory, but since the beginning of the war it had 
been known as the Libby prison. At the time of the bat- 
tle of Gettysburg many hundreds of northern officers were 
herded together in squalid captivity inside its walls. On 
the night of July 3rd a report reached these wretched pris- 
oners of another Confederate victory. The sorrow and 
distress that this report caused can scarcely be imagined; 
there was very little sleep for any of the inmates of the 
prison that night; but in the morning an old negro ap- 
peared with a true account of the battle. No bearer of 



GETTYSBURG 397 

good tidings ever seemed more beautiful in the eyes of 
glad people than did that old woolly-headed darkey to those 
half-starved officers. They crowded around him with 
tears and laughter and then some one began to sing Julia 
Ward Howe's glorious Battle Hymn of the Republic, to 
which Lincoln could never listen without tears ; the hymn 
was caught up by five hundred voices, and the crazj'^ old 
walls of that southern prison echoed to a mighty psean of 
victory : 

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord ; 

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword ; 
His Truth is marching on. 

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps ; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps ; 
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps ; 
His Day is marching on. 

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel — 
*As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal' ; 
Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel, 
Since God is marching on. 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat ; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; 
O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him ; be jubilant, my feet, — 
Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me ; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on." 



CHAPTER LXVI 

IN THE >yEST. THE FALL OF VICKSBUKG 

WHILE we leave the East rejoicing or griev- 
ing over the result at Gettysburg, we must 
turn our attention to the happenings in the 
western theater of war. General Grant's successes had 
forced the Confederates back upon the South, so that as 
early as the spring of 1862 the frontier line of Confederate 
territory no longer enclosed Kentuck}^ and even Tennes- 
see was but loosely held. The battle of Pea Ridge, which 
resulted in a Federal victory, wrenched from the South- 
erners their footing in Missouri and Arkansas; so things 
were looking very hopeful for the Union. But soon after 
the occupation of Corinth by United States troops General 
Braxton Bragg took 35,000 Confederate soldiers by train 
to Mobile, Alabama, and from thence northward into Ten- 
nessee, where he seized Chattanooga. From this strongly 
fortified place he was able to defy the Federal generals, 
and it was to cost the Union desperate fighting to regain 
control of Tennessee. 

Bragg moved north again from Chattanooga, intent on 
reaching Louisville, Kentucky; but General Buell, of the 
Union army, made for the same objective and reached it 
first. A battle was fought at Perryville, Kentucky, which 
ended in Bragg*s discomfiture and his retreat to Chatta- 
nooga. 

Meanwhile that part of the Union army which had been 
left at Corinth was attacked, on the 3rd and 4th of Octo- 
ber, 1862, by Confederates under General Van Dorn. 
The assault was so violent that the Union troops were 

398 



IN THE WEST 399 

forced back in the first charge, and the Confederates actu- 
ally got into Corinth. They could not hold it, however, for 
General Rosecrans rallied his Federals to such good pur- 
pose that they drove the enemy out of the town and Van 
Dorn's offensive came to nothing. 

Soon after this battle of Corinth, Rosecrans was sent 
north to help to dislodge Bragg from Tennessee, and so 
General Grant was left to exercise sole command in 
Mississippi. He it was who was expected to gain pos- 
session of the Mississippi River, or rather of the section 
of it which was still under Confederate control. Vicks- 
burg was the focus for his attention, for it was there that 
communication was kept open between the Confederate 
States on each side of the river. But Vicksburg was so 
well fortified and so difficult of approach that even Grant's 
ingenuity was taxed to the utmost before he succeeded in 
getting near enough to lay siege to the stronghold. 

Plan after plan for reaching Vicksburg failed, but 
finally Grant determined on a course so hazardous that not 
one general in a thousand would have dared to attempt it. 
The Confederate fortress was built upon a high bluff, the 
foot of which was washed by the waters of the Mississippi. 
To the north Vicksburg was not easy of access because of 
a great morass through which the Yazoo River wound its 
sluggish way. Grant was above Vicksburg — that is, to 
the north of it — and on the same side of the river; but he 
saw that it was hopeless to attack the stronghold from 
there, so he crossed the Mississippi and marched to a point 
below the fortress, on the opposite bank. Contrary to 
what was supposed to be good generalship, he had now 
cut himself off from his base of supplies; but he had or- 
dered Admiral Porter to run transports past the batteries 
of the enemy at night. This had been done successfully 
and the transports were waiting ready to ferry the troops 
across the river and land tliem at Bruinsburg, a place about 



400 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sixty miles south of Vicksburg and on the city's weakest 
side. 

The land near the river was low and marshy — 

"The Father River fringed with dykes, 
Gray cypresses, palmetto spikes. 
Bayous and swamps and yellowing canes — " 

SO it was necessary to strike in away from this low ground 
until some decent roads could be found for the Union 
army to travel. Grant delayed only long enough to im- 
provise a wagon-train to carry ammunition and then he 
set out on one of the most remarkable marches of the war. 
That wagon-train was a motley sight. It was made up, 
we are told, of "fine carriages loaded nearly to the top with 
boxes of cartridges, drawn by mules with plow-harness, 
straw-collars, rope-lines, etc.; long-coupled wagons, with 
racks for carrying cotton bales, drawn by oxen ; and every- 
thing that could be found in the way of transportation on 
a plantation, either for use or for pleasure." 

The Union troops were now in the enemy's country, 
where "here and there plantations rolled," and, as one sol- 
dier described it, 

"... half-deserted towns. 

Devoid of men, where women scowl, 
Avoiding us as lepers foul 
With sidling gait and flouting gowns." 

The soldiers were largely dependent upon this unfriendly 
country for food, for they were able to carry only very 
short rations with them ; they were constantly meeting hos- 
tile troops with whom they had daily skirmishes ; yet they 
forged bravely ahead. "The country in this part of Mis- 
sissippi," wrote Grant, "stands on edge, as it were, the 
roads running along the ridges except where they occa- 



IN THE WEST 401 

sionally pass from one ridge to another. AVhere there 
are no clearings, the sides of the hills are covered with a 
very heavy growth of timber, and the ravines are filled with 
vines and canebrakes almost impenetrable." 

But the determined General made little of the difficulties 
of the roads. In nineteen days he marched his men a 
hundred and eighty miles and stopped to fight — and win — 
five important battles. He took Jackson, the capital of 
Mississippi, and by a series of movements succeeded in 
shutting up General Pemberton, the Confederate leader, 
with his entire army, in the fortifications of Vicksburg. 
Twice Grant tried to- carry these fortifications by assault, 
but the Confederates held out against him. The Federal 
troops, therefore, had to be content with taking possession 
of high, dry ground north of Vicksburg and with securing 
a base of supplies which had a safe water communication 
with the North. On the 18th of May, Grant's army set- 
tled down in this comfortable position to lay regular siege 
to the Confederate stronghold. A strict blockade was im- 
posed upon the poorly provisioned city, and from the 
Union gunboats and from Grant's own lines an almost 
ceaseless bombardment of Vicksburg was kept up. 

Behind Grant's position General Joseph E. Johnston 
was gathering an amiy for the relief of the doomed fort- 
ress, and for a time it looked as though the FederaHsts 
might find themselves in a very awkward position, wedged 
in between two sections of an army that was numerically 
stronger than Grant's; but the Union general was not 
alarmed. He detailed his able subordinate. General Sher- 
man, with thirty thousand men to cope with Johnston, 
while he attended to the foe in his front. 

Never did Southern courage bum brighter than it did 
in besieged Vicksburg. The people dug caves in the hills 
where they sheltered from the awful fire of the Union guns. 
When their food was exhausted they slaughtered their 



402 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

mules and ate them; and in their daily newspapers, which 
were printed on wall-paper when the ordinary supply of 
paper gave out, they made light of their sufferings and 
spoke derisively of General Grant. But even the supply 
of mules finally came to an end; and as a people cannot 
live on courage alone, Vicksburg had to surrender with 
her garrison of 23,000 men. Grant rode into the fortress 
on the 4th of July 1863 — that same 4th of July which saw 
the Union rejoicing over the victory at Gettysburg. The 
first thing that Grant did on entering the city was to dis- 
tribute rations among the half -famished Confederate sol- 
diers and citizens. 

Wliile Grant was occupied in the siege of Vicksburg, 
General Banks, who had taken an army of the Union 
troops by sea to New Orleans, was trying to capture Port 
Hudson, farther down the river. Two assaults were re- 
pulsed, but when Vicksburg surrendered, Port Hudson 
was obliged to yield. This gave possession of the great 
river wholly into Union hands. In Lincoln's words, the 
Mississippi now "flowed unvexed to the sea." 

After such disaster as the Confederates had suffered at 
Gettysburg and Vicksburg it would have been only natural 
if, realizing the hopelessness of their cause, they had sued 
for peace; but it was not in the nature of Southerners to 
admit defeat. For two years more the South fought on 
with grim determination. Her resources grew more re- 
stricted every day; and the great problem of how to find 
food and clothing for her soldiers remained unsolved. 
Money was painfully scarce in the South and the paper 
currency issued by the Confederate Government was 
steadily decreasing in value. At the beginning of the war 
a Confederate note for one dollar and twenty cents would 
purchase one gold dollar; but by January, 1863, it took 
three paper dollars to buy one dollar in gold; which after 
Gettysburg could not be had for less than twenty dollars 



IN THE WEST 403 

in Government promise-money. Before the end of the re- 
bellion sixty paper dollars were required to obtain the one 
golden coin ! 

President Davis was forced to ask the people for gifts 
of jewelry and silver plate; and the enthusiastic Southern 
women brought him the fine old silver that had been theirs 
for generations, and they gave up their cherished jewelry 
to replenish Confederate coffers, as eagerly as they had 
given their old pots and pans to melt down for the fur- 
nishing of the Ironclad ships of war. The lists of silver 
spoons and teapots, of rings and bracelets, that were pub- 
lished in the Richmond newspapers make one of the most 
pathetic comments on the Civil War, for they show to 
what straits the Southerners were reduced and with what 
futile heroism they strove against great odds. 

After Vicksburg the Confederates had only four hun- 
dred thousand men under arms, while the North had a 
million of men in the field and a sufficiency of everything 
for the comfort of her soldiers. 

It is not necessary for us to follow every careful step 
of the campaign in the West, w^here Grant in command 
of all the forces won one victory after another. He was 
ably supported by Generals Rosecrans, Thomas and Sher- 
man. The most important battles were those of Chicka- 
mauga, Chattanooga, Lookout ISIountain and jNIissionary 
Ridge, all of which were fought in September, October, 
or November of 1863. In March, 1864, General Grant 
succeeded Halleck as commander-in-chief of the Union 
army and realizing that his place was in front of Wash- 
ington, he took up his headquarters with the Army of the 
Potomac and left General Sherman to command the West- 
ern forces. 

The elixir of success had put new life into the entire 
North, which was now athrill with energy and the con- 
sciousness that in Grant had been found a leader whose 



404 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

generalship equaled that of Lee. The country was agog 
for a meeting between the two great generals. The Union 
Government, well aware of the failing resources of the 
South, hoped that one more campaign against Richmond 
would end the war. In order to strengthen Grant's forces, 
President Lincoln drafted 500,000 men into the Federal 
army; and soon a new version of the rallying song of the 
North was heard: 

"If you look across the hill-tops that meet the northern 

sky, 
Long moving hnes of rising dust your vision ma}"^ descry ; 
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside, 
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride, 
While bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave 

music pour: 
We are coming. Father Abraham, five hundred thousand 

more." 

In the South the preparations for the great encounter were 
necessarily simple. JVIen tightened their belts and tried to 
forget that they were hungiy by remembering only the 
glory of the South and what she expected of her sons. 



CHAPTER LXVII 

THE BATTLE m THE WILDERNESS AND THE 
SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT was one of the 
strong personalities brought into prominence by 
the Civil War. Born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, 
April 27, 1822, he was of Scottish ancestry, although his 
family had been American for several generations. His 
boyhood was spent on his father's farm, where he helped 
with the work in summer, and in winter attended the vil- 
lage school. When he was seventeen he was appointed to 
a cadetship in the United States Military Academy, and 
the training at West Point shaped young Grant for his 
life work. He was not a brilliant scholar, although he 
stood well in most of his studies. In cavalry-drill he 
proved himself to be the best horseman in his class, as 
later he was recognized to be one of the best horsemen in 
the army. 

Grant served as a lieutenant during the Mexican War 
and was conspicuous for his bravery. After the war, how- 
ever, he resigned from the army and went to farming in 
Missouri; but he was not a successful farmer, so he moved 
to Galena, Illinois, where he was employed as a clerk in 
a leather and hardware store belonging to his father. 
When the Civil War opened he was made a mustering of- 
ficer for Illinois, was appointed colonel of the Twenty- 
first Regiment from that State, and so began his im- 
portant military career. 

Like all men who achieve great things. Grant had ene- 

405 



406 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

mies as well as strong supporters. After the war was over 
and when the Republicans were intent on making him 
President of the United States and the Democrats were 
determined to keep him out of office, Colonel Zell was 
addressing a meeting of Republicans one evening when a 
Democrat at the back of the hall called out: "It is easy 
talkin'. Colonel; but we'll show you something next fall." 
The Democratic watchword was 'Anything to beat Grant" 
and, knowing this, the Colonel turned upon his interrupter 
with flashing eyes and cried out: "Build a worm- wood 
fence round a winter supply of summer weather; catch a 
thunderbolt in a bladder; break a hurricane to harness; 
hang out the ocean on a grape-vine to dry; but never, sir, 
never for a moment delude yourself with the idea that you 
can beat Grant." 

This remarkable piece of eloquence with its amazing 
metaphors is amusing, but it expresses very well the kind 
of enthusiasm that Grant could rouse in his followers ; and 
since faith in the leader counts for very much in the win- 
ning of battles, General Grant was fortunate in possessing 
those qualities which inspire confidence. 

On the eve of his great campaign, in the early spring of 
1864, the Federal forces seemed to have everything their 
own way. The impoverished state of the South was a 
strong factor in Union favor, and Grant realized that ; but 
he saw, too, that every soldier in the South had to be reck- 
oned with. No matter how worn and weary they were, in 
spite of their rags and tatters, Lee's men were of America's 
best fiffhtino- stock and Lee was one of the most scientific 
generals that ever lived; so Grant's task was not so easy 
as it looked, although his forces were strong and well 
equipped. He had to face a people at bay, and a people 
who fought with that terrible courage that is born of a 
forlorn hope. 

Grant's plan for the campaign was simple. His object 



BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 407 

was to exhaust the Southern troops and so put an end to 
the rebellion. With this purpose in view, he divided all 
the L^nion forces into distinct armies, which were to move 
simultaneously against the Confederate armies. Orders 
were issued for a general movement to take place on INIaj'- 
4th. Sherman was to march toward Atlanta and to en- 
gage the attention of General Johnston and the Confeder- 
ate forces under him. Bank's army was to operate in 
Alabama. While General Sigel was to move do^n the 
Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, in order to prevent the 
Confederates from making raids in that quarter. Meade, 
in direct command of the Army of the Potomac, but with 
Grant at his elbow, was to bear the brunt of battle by mov- 
ing against Lee's army on the old line between Washing- 
ton and Richmond. 

The armies under Grant and Lee met in a gloomy region 
known as "The Wilderness," where stunted trees and 
tangled underbrush stretched for miles, and there, not far 
from the fatal field of Chancellorsville, a terrible contest 
took place. The Union army was about one hundred and 
twenty thousand strong, while the Confederates numbered 
only sixty-two thousand. 

During the second day of battle, Lee was impressed with 
the necessity for taking a peculiarly difficult position, and 
seeing that his men needed encouragement, he seized the 
colors of a Texas regiment and undertook to lead the peri- 
lous assault in person. The troops and their colonel 
begged the general to go back, and when he would not, the 
desperate men cried out: "We'll go forward, but you 
must go back!" and they would not move an inch until 

"Turning his bridle, Robert Lee 
Rode to the rear . . ." 

then — 



408 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"... like waves of the sea, 
Bursting the dikes in their overflow 
Madlj his veterans dashed on the foe." 

They advanced to the charge shouting, "Lee to the Rear!" 
as a battle-cry and carried the coveted position, but it was 
only a minor victory. 

For sixteen days the fighting was continuous in the 
Wilderness and about Spottsylvania Court House. The 
Confederates fought behind entrenchments which Grant 
could not force, but he made a practise of marching round 
the enemy's flank and so obliging Lee to change his posi- 
tion. It was a weary and bloody struggle. The men in 
both armies toiled all day at the work of slaughter, and 
if they lay down at night they were so near to one another 
that they were afraid to sleep. Not since the battles of the 
great Napoleon had the world known such furious fighting. 
The Union army alone lost thirty-seven thousand men ; so 
that the roads back toward Washington presented an un- 
ending panorama of ambulances, moving at a foot pace, 
carrying the wounded to hospital; in those awful days the 
chief city of the Union was a city of hospitals. The Gov- 
ernment was doing what lay in its power to heal and com- 
fort the sufferers who, in spite of all, paid their country's 
debt in anguish and pain. 

One thing the war had done besides developing and im- 
proving weapons and munitions : it had evolved new meth- 
ods and gentler means for dealing with the wounded. Not 
government officials alone but hundreds of kindly men and 
women in the North made it their care to supply wagons, 
nurses, and comforts for the soldiers. The Sanitarj^ Com- 
mission of the Civil War, supported entirely by voluntary 
contributions, was a forerunner of the Red Cross Society 
and of the other charitable contingents that are so closely 
associated with the military authorities in modern warfare. 

In a poem called How Are You, Sanitary? Bret Harte 



BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 409 

has shown some of the abashed reverence with which the 
soldiers of the Civil War regarded the ambulance corps. 

"Down the picket-guarded lane 
Rolled the comfort-laden wain, 
Cheered bj shouts that shook the plain, 

Soldier-like and merry: 
Phrases such as camps may teach. 
Saber-cuts of Saxon speech, 
Such as 'Bully !' 'Them's the peach !' 
'Wade in, Sanitary 1' 

Right and left the caissons drew 
As the car went lumbering through, 
Quick succeeding in review 

Squadrons military ; 
Sunburnt men with beards like frieze. 
Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these: 
'U. S. San. Com. That's the cheese !' 

'Pass in. Sanitary !' 

In such cheer it struggled on 
Till the battle front was won ; 
Then the car, its journey done, 

Lo ! was stationary ; 
And where bullets whistling fly 

Came the sadder, fainter cry; 
*Help us, brothers, ere we die ! 

Save us. Sanitary !' 

Such the work. The phantom flies. 
Wrapt in battle-clouds that rise; 
But the brave — whose dying eyes, 

Veiled and visionar^^ 
See the jasper gates swing wide, 
See the parted throng outside — 
Hears the voice to those who ride : 

'Pass in, Sanitary !' " 



410 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

General Grant Imew that, heavy as were his losses, Lee's 
were worse, because the gaps in the Confederate ranks 
could never be filled, for there were no fighting men left 
in the South who were not already under arms ; so, steeling 
his heart against pitj% the Federal general sent word to 
Lincoln that he would "fight it out on this line, if it should 
take all summer." 

Little by little the belligerent armies were drawing near 
Richmond ; for Grant's flanking movements were continu- 
ally forcing the Confederates to withdraw from one row 
of entrenchments to another farther south, but so well 
matched were the two great generals that there had been 
no complete victory on either side. It was plain that the 
Federalists could not yet strike a telling blow against the 
Confederate capital; so Grant marched past Richmond, 
crossed the James River, on the 13th of June, and ad- 
vanced toward Petersburg. His plan was to capture the 
little town, which was a base of supplies and reinforce- 
ments for Richmond. The outer works of Petersburg 
were carried successf ullj^ ; but before the Union troops 
could take the town, the Confederates had hurried to its 
relief and had stationed their forces so cleverly that all at- 
tempt to drive them out by assault failed. Grant, there- 
fore, entrenched himself close to the Confederate lines and 
there began a stubborn siege of Petersburg that was to last 
not only all summer but far into the following winter. 

Around the little town stretched the earthworks of the 
combatants. They covered forty miles before the end of 
the war. The men of both armies lay in rifle-pits or shal- 
low trenches watching for an opportunity to kill. If a 
man incautiously raised his head, he was picked off by the 
unerring fire of the enemy, and so close were the outposts 
of the two armies that the soldiers called jeering remarks, 
one to the other. The Union troops were fresh and in 



BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 411 

good condition; supplies of every nature were sent to 
Grant from the North. He "had the rebelhon by the 
throat" and, knowing this, he never relaxed his hold. The 
Confederate troops were worn out with three years* con- 
stant fighting, and their supplies were almost exhausted. 
Grant's army outnumbered them more than two to 
one; yet they never swerved from their loyalty to 
Lee and the Confederate cause. Lee himself was as 
determined as ever in his opposition to Grant, but 
his heart was heavy, for daily he had to bear the sorrow 
of knowing that his men were hungry and ill cared for and 
that he was powerless to alleviate their sufferings. One 
day he received by mail an anonymous letter from a pri- 
vate soldier. It was accompanied by a ver}'^ small slice of 
salt pork which was carefully packed between two chips 
of wood. In the letter the writer explained that he was 
sending his day's ration of meat to the General as evidence 
that it was insufficient to support life, and as his excuse for 
having been driven by the pangs of hunger to the crime 
of stealing. Such incidents as this were a sore trial to the 
kindly General. 

Early in the siege of Petersburg, an elaborate mine was 
dug from the trenches of the Union army under an angle 
of the Confederate works. Twelve thousand pounds of 
gunpowder were placed in this mine, and it was hoped 
that its explosion would leave a gap in the enemy's lines 
large enough to allow the entrance of Federal forces. We 
are told that on the night before the mine was fired a divi- 
sion of negro troops, who were with the Army of the Po- 
tomac, were informed that they were to lead the charge 
which was immediately to follow the explosion of the mine. 
The news that they were to have the honor of striking such 
an important blow for liberty filled the hearts of the col- 
ored men with a kind of solemn joy. Too much overcome 



412 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

for words, they formed circles round their camp-fires and 
sat in sober contemplation, until a hea\y voice began to 

sing, 

"We-e looks li-ike nie-en a-a-niarchin' on, 
We looks li-ike men-er-war." 

The same words were sung over and over again, with vari- 
ations on the melody, while the others listened. Suddenly 
they all seemed to understand the singer's meaning — they 
were to be men now, slaves no longer, but in en fit to lead 
where they had always been driven. Group after gi'oup 
took up the refrain mitil a thousand voices were singing it 
as only negroes can sing. They improved upon the mel- 
ody, wreathing it with strange pathos, putting a volume 
of thanksgiving into it, until they had made of those two 
lines a choral of rejoicing. *Tt was a picturesque scene," 
wrote ]Major-General Thomas, who witnessed it. "Those 
dark men with tlieir white eyes and teeth and full red lips, 
crouched over a smoldering camp-fire, in dusky shadows, 
with only the feeble rays of the lanterns of the first ser- 
geants and the lights of the candles dimly showing through 
the tents. The sound was as weird as the scene — 

"We-e looks li-ike me-en a-a-niarchin' on. 
We looks li-ike men-er-war." 

Early the next morning the mine was fii-ed. A great 
mass of debris was thrown into the air and the Confeder- 
ate defense at that point was demolished. Union troops 
were marched at double-quick time toward the gap in the 
enemy lines, but by some confusion of orders the attack 
was mismanaged. The troops were massed in the great 
pit, thirty feet deep, that their own mine had scooped out 
of the earth, and before they could be got out of this pre- 
carious position, the Confederates had trained their guns 
upon the pit, w^here fifteen hundred Federal soldiers soon 



1 



BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 418 

lay dead. The much-talked-of mine had failed to advance 
the Union cause; it had only proved a death-trap for 
Union soldiers, among whom were many dusky "men-er- 
war" who showed that they could die like the heroes that 
they were. 



CHAPTER LXVIII 

THE CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 

IN accordance with Grant's plan, General Sherman 
had marched from Tennessee into Georgia. There 
he had to face a strong Confederate army on its 
own ground, where every man's hand was against him and 
where the very country seemed to offer resistance to the 
Union advance; but Sherman was one of those leaders to 
whom each obstacle counts only as an opportunity for over- 
coming a difficulty. He defeated the enemy in countless 
skirmishes and pressed forward, by dint of hard-won bat- 
tles, until on September 2, 1864, he reached and occupied 
Atlanta, the capital of Georgia. Such a triumph was not 
won, however, without great cost. The Union lost 30,000 
men in the enterprise ; but they gained a city which was of 
vast importance, because it was the Southern factory cen- 
ter, where big guns were made for the Confederacy and 
where most of the ammunition was turned out. Atlanta 
had great foundries and machine shops where locomotives 
were made, and it commanded the railroads by which the 
Confederates were accustomed to send supplies to their 
armies ; so it was a most satisfactory haul for the Union. 

On every side Sherman saw pitiful evidence of the al- 
most exhausted resources of the South, and he planned a 
bold march tlirough the Confederacy, in order to show the 
Southerners how useless it was for them to oppose the great 
strength of the North. His object was to march eastward 
to the sea, cutting as he went a swath of destitution and 
destruction sixty miles broad, in order to impress the Con- 

414 



CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 415 

federates with the far-reaching power of the Union. He 
had a splendid army of 60,000 men, all eager for the adven- 
ture ; so, setting fire to the puhlic buildings of Atlanta and 
cutting the telegraph wires, Sherman, having obtained Lin- 
coln's consent, started on his famous "JNIarch to the Sea." 

" 'Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the 
coast !' 
So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast, 
Had they not forgot, alas, to reckon with the host. 
While we were marching through Georgia." 

In the North nothing was heard of Sherman for a month, 
but in the South he sped like an avenging demon, laying 
waste the country as he went. He carried off such sup- 
plies as he needed for his men and everything he could not 
use he destroyed. Destruction came to be a military art 
with him; wherever his army passed, it left behind it a 
wake of misery and suffering, fire and ruin. Not only 
were all the provisions destroyed but even the raih-oads 
were so thoroughly demolished that they could not be re- 
paired until some time after the war was over. 

Sherman's destructive march right through the heart of 
Georgia had the desired moral effect on friend and foe, 
because it proved the power of the Union as ojDposed to 
the weakness of the Confederacy. 

The Federal soldiers were balked by no difficulty of the 
march. They seemed to find a zest in wading through 
swamps, and they grew adepts at making "corduroy roads" 
as they went along. The rail fences were cheerfully torn 
down to make these primitive highways through the 
marshes, and the army wagons went bumping and lumber- 
ing over them with gay unconcern. Usually above the 
noise of marching army could be heard the laughter of the 
men, or their voices singing: 



416 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"How the darkies shouted when thej' heard the joyful sound! 
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found! 
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, 
While we were marching through Georgia!" 

Having met with little resistance, Sherman covered the 
three hundi-ed miles between Atlanta and the sea. On the 
10th of December, with his 60,000 troops, he reached Sa- 
vannah, which General Hardee held with 15,000 Confed- 
erates. Sherman demanded the surrender of the city ; but 
Hardee refused. Then began a ten days' siege, with a 
little fighting. On December 18th Sherman opened com- 
munications with the Union squadron that was blockading 
Savannah. Hardee, seeing that he could not hold the city 
against such odds, then withdrew with his troops under 
cover of darkness on the night of the 20th, and the follow- 
ing day Sherman entered in triumph. He promptly sent 
a telegram to President Lincoln: "I beg to present you, 
as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hun- 
dred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and 
also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." 

After resting his men for a month, Sherman led his 
army northward through the Carolinas to join Grant in 
Virginia. Now began the worst part of his march, for he 
encountered pelting rain, overflowed swamps and flooded 
rivers. Often the army was obliged to flounder along for 
miles in water two feet deep; and for days together the 
foragers would bring in nothing but rice to eat, so the 
soldiers were often hungry; but they were old campaigners, 
accustomed to take the evil with the good and they bore 
their hardships with very little grumbling. 

A great embarrassment to the marching army was the 
following of negroes who swarmed in its wake. These 
poor creatures came from every direction, bringing all their 
household goods with them. Major-General Slocum tells 



CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 417 

the story of how, one day, a large family of slaves came 
through a field to join the marching column. "The head 
of the family, a venerahle old negro, was mounted on a 
mule; and safely stowed away behind in pockets or bags 
attached to the blanket which covered the mule were two 
little pickaninnies, one on each side. On the next day," 
continues the narrator, "a mule appeared in column, cov- 
ered by a blanket with two pockets on each side, each con- 
taining a little negro. Very soon old tent-flies or strong 
canvas was used instead of the blankets, and often ten or 
fifteen pockets were attached to each side, so that nothing 
of the mule was visible except the head, tail, and feet, all 
else being covered by the black woolly heads and bright 
shining eyes of the little darkies. Occasionally a cow was 
made to take the place of the mule ; this was a decided im- 
provement, as the cow furnished rations as well as trans- 
poi-tation for the babies." 

As Sherman pushed on northward he had his old foe. 
General Joseph E. Johnston, to reckon with. But 
Johnston did not show fight until a little town in North 
Carolina was reached. There the Confederates were de- 
feated ; but at Bentonville one column of Sherman's army 
came near being wiped out by Johnston. Reinforcements 
reached it, however, just in the nick of time. 

Meanwhile a smaller campaign had been going forward 
in the Shenandoah Valley. On the 15th of May, 1864, 
General Sigel was defeated by the Confederates under 
General Breckinridge at New Market. General Hunter 
was then put in command of the Union troops. He de- 
feated the Confederates at Piedmont, and with eighteen 
thousand men pushed south to Lynchburg, which he hoped 
to take, as it was almost as vital to the Confederates as 
Petersburg. Hunter failed, however, in his attempt to 
capture the town ; although he wrought considerable dam- 
age, destroying railroads and setting fire to stores. When 



418 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

he tried to return to Union territory, he found his retreat 
cut off, and in order to save his army from annihilation, he 
escaped into the Kanawha Valley, in West Virginia. This 
left the Shenandoah open to the Confederates. Accord- 
ingly General Jubal A. Early pressed northward with 
fifteen thousand men ; and he promised to be a real danger 
to the Union, until Grant sent General Philip H. Sheri- 
dan, with forty thousand men, to look after Federal in- 
terests in the Valley. 

Sheridan met Early at Winchester, and on the 19th of 
September a hard battle was fought. The Confederates 
were defeated and fell back to Fisher's Hill, where three 
days later Sheridan routed them from their trenches and 
drove them south. To prevent their return, the Union 
soldiers burned all the barns filled with grain, and carried 
off all the stock in the valley. No sooner, however, had 
Sheridan withdrawn in the direction of the Potomac, when 
Early, with his handful of men, crept after him through 
the desolated land. 

Sheridan, unsuspicious of a lurking foe, left his troops 
while he went on to Winchester, twenty miles away. 
There he was roused one morning by the distant sounds 
of battle, and he realized that his army had been attacked 
in their general's absence. Springing on his horse he 
dashed off down the highroad, with a prayer in his heart 
that he might reach his troops in time to save the day. 

"Up from the south, at break of day, 
Bringing to Winchester fresh disma}'^. 
The affrighted air with a shudder bore. 
Like a herald in haste to the chieftain's door. 
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, 
Telling the battle was on once more. 
And Sheridan twenty miles away. 



CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 419! 

And wider still those billows of war 

Thundered along the horizon's bar; 

And louder yet into Winchester rolled 

The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, 

Making the blood of the listener cold, 

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, 

With Sheridan twenty miles away. 

But there is a road from Winchester town, 

A good broad highway leading down : 

And there, through the flush of morning light, 

A steed as black as the steeds of night 

Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight ; 

As if he knew the terrible need 

He stretched away with his utmost speed ; 

Hills rose and fell ; but his heart was gay, 

With Sheridan fifteen miles away. 

Still sprang from those swift hoofs thundering south. 
The dust like smoke from the cannon's mouth. 
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster, 
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster. 
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master 
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls, 
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls ; 
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play. 
With Sheridan only ten miles away. 

Under his spurning feet the road. 

Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed 

And the landscape sped away behind 

Like an ocean flying before the wind ; 

And the steed like a bark fed with furnace ire, 

Swept on with his wild eye full of fire. 

But now he is ncaring his heart's desire ; 

He is snuffing the smoke of the battle fray. 

With Sheridan only five miles away. 



420 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The first that the general saw were the groups 

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops ; 

What was done? What to do? A glance told him both. 

Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath, 

He dashed down the lines, 'mid a storm of huzzas. 

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because 

The sight of the master compelled it to pause. 

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray ; 

B\^ the flash of his eye and the red nostrils' play, 

He seemed to the whole great army to say: 

'I have brought you Sheridan all the way 

From Winchester down to save the day.' " 

This (according to Mr. Thomas Buchanan Read) is what 
happened. At any rate the day was saved, for when their 
leader galloped among them, the Federal troops seemed 
to wake from a stupor of surprise. They turned upon the 
almost triumphant enemy and from that moment they were 
victorious. Early was defeated with such heavy loss that 
he was not able to renew the war in the Shenandoah Valley. 

By November of this tumultuous year, 1864, the time 
had come for a Presidential election. There were several 
candidates for ofiice, but the successes of the Union army 
made the people feel that they could not do better than to 
keep in power the man whose untiring service had been 
mainly responsible for the trend of events. Lincoln was, 
therefore, reelected by the largest majority of votes ever 
kno^vn. "They concluded," smiled the President, with 
his kindly humor, "that it is best not to swap horses while 
crossing the stream." With more seriousness he said, *Tt 
is not my nature to triumph over any one; but I give 
thanks to Almighty God for this evidence of the people's 
resolution to stand by free government and the rights of 
humanity." 

During the winter it came to be more and more clear 
that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall. Sherman, 



CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 421 

by destroying the railroads in the Southern States, had 
added tenfold to the distress of Lee's army, for neither 
supplies nor reinforcements could be got through to Rich- 
mond without great difficulty. Often a whole day would 
elapse in which the Confederate army would have abso- 
lutely nothing to eat ; but if the soldiers suffered, the civil- 
ians were in an even worse case — the destitution through- 
out the whole South was unthinkable. Jefferson Davis 
came to be looked upon with less confidence by the South- 
erners; for, justly or unjustly, he was blamed for their 
sorrows. 

Before the roads were fairly open, after the winter's 
rain, Grant determined on a general movement of all the 
Union troops around Richmond. His force was more 
than twice as large as Lee's and he maneuvered it in such 
a way as to prevent the starving Confederate army from 
taking flight. Lee struggled valiantly ; but every circum- 
stance was against him and he was overcome. On the 
night of April 2, 1865, he began his retreat from Rich- 
mond. The next morning Federal troops entered the 
Southern capital and hoisted the Union flag over the 
building that had been the home of the Confederate Con- 
gress; thus came to an end the political power of the South 
as a separate nation. 

Among the first troops to enter Richmond, was a regi- 
ment of negro soldiers. They went into the city with a 
song on their lips : 

"Say, darkey, hab you seen de massa, 
Wid de muffstash on he face. 
Go long de road some time dis mornin', 
Like he gwine Icabe de place? 
He see de smoke way up de ribber 
Whar de Lincum gunboats lay ; 
He took he hat an' leff berry sudden. 



422 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

And I s'pose he's runned away. 

De massa run, ha, ha ! 

De darkey stay, ho, ho ! 

It mus' be now de kingdom comin* 

An' de yar ob jubilo. 

• • • • • 

De oberseer he makes us trubble 

An' he dribe us roun' a spell, 

We lock him up in de smoke-house cellar, 

Wid de key flung in de well — 

De whip am lost, de han'-cuff broke, 

But de massa hab his pay ; 

He big an' ole enough to know better 

Dan to went an' run away. 

De massa run, ha, ha ! 

De darkey stay, ho, ho ! 

It mus' be now de kingdom comin' 

An' de yar ob jubilo." 

Near Grant's headquarters President Lincoln had been 
waiting for news. As soon as he heard of the downfall of 
the Confederate government, he set out for Richmond. 
There was none of the savage joy of conquest in Lincoln's 
gentle heart, nor was there any great pomp and circum- 
stance attending his entry into the city. With no escort 
save the crew of a gunboat near at hand, the President, 
leading Tad by the hand, walked into Richmond. "He 
walked as one in a dream," we are told; for this city so 
long the focus of Northern hopes was in possession of the 
Federal Government at last, and the Confederate Gov- 
ernment that had threatened the most sacred union of the 
United States was already a thing of the past. 

Hundreds of negroes crowded around the President 
with cries and gestures of devotion. They knelt to him, 
they danced, they sang. They stretched out their arms 
to Lincoln, their Liberator, with frantic prayers for bless- 



CLOSE OF THE GREAT REBELLION 423 

ing, while he stood among them, a tall ungainly figure, with 
tears streaming down his cheeks. In this the greatest 
moment of his life, Lincoln, the man of ready wit and 
splendid eloquence, was dumb. Bowing to right and left 
the acknowledgment that he could not speak, the Presi- 
dent passed on into the interior of the city. On every side 
he saw evidences of the poverty and great trial through 
which the Southerners had passed, and when one of his 
generals asked him what should be done in regard to the 
conquered people, Lincoln replied that he could give no 
orders on that subject, but he added, "If I were in your 
place I'd let 'em up easy, let 'em up easy." 

When Lee retreated from Richmond it was his intention 
to join Johnston's forces at Danville; but he found Union 
troops across his path. He turned toward Lynchburg, 
only to be confronted by Sheridan's cavalry. On all sides 
he was hemmed in, and by great misfortune a supply-train 
from the South which he had expected to intercept had 
gone on to Richmond; so the Southern general found him- 
self and his starving army at the mercy of the enemy. 

Grant sent a courteous letter asking Lee to surrender. 
For two days the Confederate general held off, but on the 
9th of April, 1865, he wrote to Grant asking for an inter- 
view in order to arrange terms. The request was granted 
and the two greatest generals of the Civil War met at a 
private dwelling in the little village of Appomattox Court 
House. Although they were both West Point men and 
both had fought in the Mexican War, this was the fii-st time 
that Grant and Lee had spoken to each other. 

The meeting was bitter enough for General Lee. 
When he realized that surrender was inevitable, it is said 
that he remarked, "There is nothing left for me but to go 
and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thou- 
sand deaths." Face to face with the ordeal, however, he 
carried himself with the dignity and courage of a brave 



424 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

soldier and a gentleman. On his part, Grant was deeply 
touched by the Southern general's proud but courteous 
bearing. *'I felt like anything rather than rejoicing," he 
tells us, "at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long 
and valiantly." 

The conditions of surrender offered Lee were most gen- 
erous; the Confederate soldiers were simply required to 
lay down their arms and cease from hostilities. The of- 
ficers were allowed to retain their swords and private bag- 
gage, and Grant even permitted the men who had horses 
to keep them. *'They will need them for the spring plow- 
ing," he said. As soon as the terms of surrender had been 
formally drawn up and signed by both generals, Grant 
arranged to send a large drove of oxen and a train of pro- 
vision wagons to tlie relief of Lee's men, who, their leader 
informed him, had had nothing to eat for several days ex- 
cept a little parched corn. 

At the close of the interview, Grant and Lee parted with 
mutual respect. The Union general hastened to dispatch 
a telegram to ]\Ir. Stanton, the Secretary of War at Wash- 
ington, while Lee rode off alone to break the news of sur- 
render to his army. A sad, stern figure, mounted on his 
beautiful gray horse, the Generfll faced his soldiers. 
*'Men," he said simply, *Sve have fought through the war 
together, and I have done the best I could for you." He 
was too deeply moved to say more, and the eyes of those 
veterans who had looked death smilingly in the face, who 
had not blanched at starvation, filled with tears as they 
crowded round the leader whom they loved. 

Lee's surrender was followed by the surrender of all the 
Confederate forces, so that within a few days the "beaten 
armies of unconquered men" were all disbanded. The 
war was over and it only remained for peace to heal the 
hurts of conflict. 




MEN. .SAID I.KI 



■~^''"''-^- ^^''- II -^^'l- I--!JLL-liT TUKUH.II UlL \VAIv lv.(,hiili.l< 
AND I Il.WE DONE THE JIEST I (OllI D FOK YOU" " 



CHAPTER LXIX 

THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

"When lilacs last in the doorway bloomed, 
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in 

the night, 
I mourned, and j^et shall mourn with ever-returning 

spring. 
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 
And thought of him I love." 

Walt Whitman. 

WHERE guns were still warm from the heat of 
battle, the end of hostilities was hailed with 
deep thankfulness. Grant had let it be known 
among his troops that "the best sign of rejoicing after the 
victory" would be "to abstain from all demonstrations in 
the field"; so the Union soldiers went quietly about their 
rejoicing. They let their camp-fires die out, and soberly 
tliey hauled down the blood-stained and bullet-riddled flags 
that had seen such long service and that now, at last, were 
to be furled in peace. 

It was late on the night of Palm Sunday when Lincoln, 
having just returned to Washington from Richmond, 
heard of Lee's surrender. The great news was not made 
known in the city until the next morning, when the boom- 
ing of cannon waked the people from their slumbers. 
Then how heartfelt was the delight! Everybody took a 
holiday. In the great rotunda of the Treasury Building, 
Government clerks assembled to sing Praise God from 

425 



426 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Whom all blessings flow. Total strangers shook hands 
cordially in the streets; and by a common impulse multi- 
tudes of laughing, happy people made their way toward 
the White House. Some excited citizens carted howitzers 
into the grounds and made a tremendous din with the ex- 
plosion of gunpowder. Brass bands flared forth the rous- 
ing Southern marching song, Dime Land, and hundreds of 
voices sang the chorus with a right good will : 

"Den I wish I was in Dixie ! Hoo-ray ! Hoo-ray I 
In Dixie Land, I'll take my stand, to lib and die in Dixie ; 
Away, away, away down south in Dixie." 

The President came to the window of the White House, 
his face transfigured with happiness, and bowed and smiled 
to the waving, cheering crowd. 

Peace was in the air — and with it good-will toward men. 
The North was ready to remember only that the Confed- 
erates were their countrj^men again. 

In the South, however, the old spirit of bitterness 
rankled. Defeat is hard to bear gracefully and while 
Grant's generosity to the Southern army had a good effect 
upon the majority, there were those who resented North- 
ern kindness. They had lost so much, these people, it is 
not surprising that they clung to their pride. 

In the days immediately following Lee's surrender, Lin- 
coln was closely occupied with plans for the alleviation of 
suffering caused by the war. His whole mind seemed bent 
on undoing, as far as possible, the anguish caused through- 
out both North and South by the long years of contest. 
On the morning of April 14th he held a meeting of his 
Cabinet, General Grant being present, and after the meet- 
ing he took a drive with Mrs. Lincoln, to whom he talked 
happily of the years to come. In the evening he went with 
his wife and two or three friends to Ford's Theater to see 
"Our American Cousin." 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 427 

During the troubled years of his administration, Presi- 
dent Lincoln went often to the theater. He used his pri- 
vate box there as a retreat where he was safe from impor- 
tunities and where he could rest his tired mind from the 
strain of perplexing thought. Usually he went alone, or 
accompanied solely by Tad, who was a favorite with the 
actors and actresses. It was to the theater that Lincoln 
went to await news of the Baltimore Convention in 1864. 
*'There is a Convention, as I suppose you know," he said 
to the manager that night, "and I thought I would get 
away for a little while, lest they make me promise too 
much." At nine o'clock a messenger from the White 
House brought him a telegram. "Well," said the Presi- 
dent, with his characteristic smile, "they have nominated 
me again — still, I reckon I'll stay a little while longer and 
look at the play." 

On this fatal night of April, Lincoln went to the theater 
not for rest, but because he knew that it would please the 
people to see him there. It was a gala night at Ford's, for 
Washington was still celebrating Lee's surrender. The 
President's box was gay with flags and in front of it hung a 
bunting-draped picture of George Washington. When 
the party from the Wliite House arrived, there was much 
good-natured jostling and craning of necks among the au- 
dience ; for every one was eager to get a glimpse of the be- 
loved President. Soon, however, the excitement died 
down and the play began. Every salh^ was greeted with 
hearty laughter; the people were so willing to be amused 
now that the long war tension was over I One of the 
actresses, who took the part of a delicate young lady, talked 
of wishing to avoid the draft, and her lover provoked a 
gale of merriment by telling her not to be alarmed, "be- 
cause there is no more draft." 

The President was leaning forward laughing at the 
jest, and no one noticed a man who stealthily entered the 



428 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

darkened box, until a pistol-shot rang out, startling the 
large audience. 

INIajor Rathbone, who was sitting beside Lincoln, 
sprang to his feet and attempted to seize the assassin ; but 
the man drew a long knife, stabbed Rathbone in the arm, 
and as the ^lajor involuntarily recoiled he leaped from the 
box on to the stage ten feet below. A spur that he wore 
caught and tore the flag in front of the box, and splintered 
the glass on Washington's picture. With a wild cry, "Sic 
semper tyrannis !" — the motto of Virginia, meaning "Ever 
so to tyrants" — the man strode across the stage. "The 
South is avenged!" he cried, and vanished behind the 
scenery ; but not before he had been recognized as an actor 
named John Wilkes Booth who was known to be a 
fanatical adherent of the fallen Confederacy. 

For a moment no one stirred. Horror held the house 
in an awful grip. Then the spell was broken by some one 
calling for water. Quickly the stage filled with actors, 
officers, policemen, citizens. "Is there a surgeon in the 
house?" a voice asked. The lights were turned up and it 
was seen that Lincoln sat with his head bowed on his breast. 
When physicians reached him, they found that he had been 
shot, the ball entering the brain. He was still alive, but 
mortallj^ wounded. Tenderly, strong arms lifted him and 
bore him to a house opposite the theater. 

Xo one in Washington who lived through that spring 
night of hushed waiting ever forgot its dragging hours. 
There was no sleep in the Capital; people stood about the 
streets whispering in low, broken voices, "Can he live? Is 
there no hope?" 

Soon after they had removed Lincoln from the theater, 
a body of cavalry came dashing down the street to sur- 
round the house where he lay. All night they mounted 
guard with drawn swords; but they were powerless to 
hold the house against the Angel of Death, who entered 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 429 

with the earh' morning. Surrounded by his family and 
some of the officers of State, the great President died 
shortly after seven o'clock, never having recovered con- 
sciousness. 

In the streets of Washington the flags and bunting 
that had been hung out as a sign of rejoicing were replaced 
by mournful black. When the President's body was 
borne to the White House, rain fell with a steady melan- 
choly, as if the very sky wept. The bells of the city tolled 
sadly and the President's own band played the funeral 
dirge. Behind Lincoln's inanimate form, which was sur- 
rounded by his body-guard, walked a solid phalanx of 
negro followers; they overflowed on to the walks, gather- 
ing in from every side street, until the road to the White 
House was a solid mass of weeping, wailing humanity 
mourning for this man, "gentle, plain, just, and resolute," 
of whom Frederick Douglas — an ex-slave — had said, "In 
his company I felt as though I was in the presence of a 
big brother and that there was safety in his atmosphere." 
No wonder the negroes mourned him. For them he had 
opened the gates of freedom and lighted the torch of lib- 
erty. 

The funeral of the martyred President took place from 
the White House on the 19th of April. He was buried 
in Oak Ridge Cemetery, near his old home in Springfield, 
Illinois. The funeral cortege was obliged to travel two 
thousand miles, and all along that great distance the rail- 
way was lined with mourners, who stood with uncovered 
heads as the funeral train swept by. Neither rain nor 
darkness broke the continuous chain. At night watch- 
fires blazed along the route, and by day every device was 
employed that could help to express a people's sorrow and 
lend dignity to their mourning. At the large cities the 
train waited while the coffin was lifted from its car and 
borne from end to end of the citj'-, attended by great pro- 



430 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cessions of citizens. A funeral pageant of such magnifi- 
cent proportions was unique, but its significance lay in 
that it expressed the upwelling of a nation's love for a 
great-hearted man, done to death in the hour of a noble 
triumph. 

One of the most beautiful tributes paid to President 
Lincoln is the dirge that Whitman sang: 

"0 Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring ; 
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies. 
Fallen cold and dead. 

Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 

Rise up, for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills. 

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores 

a-crowding. 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their faces eager turning ; 
Here, Captain ! dear father ! 
This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck. 
You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
Exult, shores, and ring, O bells ! 
But I with mournful tread. 

Walk the deck my Captain lies. 
Fallen cold and dead." 

Not America alone, but half the world, sorrowed be- 
cause of Lincoln's death. John Bright, the British states- 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN 431 

man, wrote to a friend in the United States: "For fifty 
years I think no other event has created such a sensation 
in this country as the crime which robbed you of your 
President. The whole people positively mourn and it 
would seem as if again we were one nation with you, so 
universal the grief and horror at the deed of which Wash- 
ington has been the scene." 

The assassin, Booth, broke his leg in the leap from the 
President's box; but he somehow managed to mount a 
horse, that he had in waiting behind the theater, and to 
make his escape into the country; and it was a week be- 
fore he was found hiding in a barn south of Fredericks- 
burg. The barn was riddled with bullets and then was 
set on fire, but Booth refused to surrender. Mercifully, 
a soldier caught sight of him and shot him down; then he 
was dragged outside. 

At the very hour when the President was murdered, a 
would-be assassin broke into the house of Mr. Seward, 
the Secretary of State, who was sick in bed, and stabbed 
him almost to death. Fortunately, the ruffian was inter- 
rupted before his bloody work was finished, and Mr. Se- 
ward lived. The simultaneous attacks — one upon the 
President and one upon the Secretary of State — looked as 
though they might be the outcome of some far-reaching 
Southern plot, but time proved them to be only the work 
of a few crazy fanatics. 

Lincoln's tragic death seemed for a time to overshadow 
all joy in the long-dreamed-of peace, but the North set 
itself to "bind up the nation's wounds," to carry out that 
work which the President had so gladly anticipated. Lin- 
coln, the man, was dead; but his spirit was vitally alive, 
urging his countrymen "to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan, to do all 
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.'* 



G 



CHAPTER LXX 

AFTER THE WAR 

EORGE MEREDITH, an unbiased and careful 
judge of men and affairs, wrote: "Since their 

(the xVmericans') most noble closing of the Civil 

War, I have looked to them as the hope of our civiliza- 
tion." 

Certainly the closing of the war was generously man- 
aged. Xo one was hano-ed for treason and the defeated 
South was not made to suffer any humiliating deprivation 
of land or funds at the hands of the victorious Xorth. 

Jefferson Davis, the President of the fallen Confed- 
eracy, was the most outstanding of the offenders and 
consequently very fearful of what would happen to him. 
When the news of Lee's surrender reached him, he was at- 
tending service in St. Paul's Church, in Richmond. He 
read the message brought into him, crumpled it in his 
hand, and then, without a word to any one, he quietly 
left the church. His first thought was of flight ; so, order- 
ing a special train, he left Richmond with a few compan- 
ions and fled South, intending to escape across the ^lissis- 
sippi into Texas. A party of United States cavab}^ was 
sent after him, and Davis led his pursuers a weary chase 
through dreary pine forests and lonely swamps. A re- 
port that his wife was ill caused him to double on his track, 
so that he might visit her in a little to'v\Ti in Georgia. 
Here the cavalry came upon him, on ^lay 10. 1865, and 
he was captured and taken back to Virginia, to be im- 
prisoned in Fortress ^lonroe. He was put in chains, an 
uncalled-for ignominv, and treated with much harshness, 

432 



AFTER THE WAR 438 

and for two years he was denied either a trial or bail. By 
his dignified conduct throughout his imprisonment, cou- 
pled with the unnecessarily severe treatment that he re- 
ceived at the hands of his jailers, Jefferson Davis regained 
his place in the hearts of the Southerners, who now looked 
upon him as a martyr to the Confederate cause. 

The Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. 
Stephens, returned to the Congress of the United States, 
and was a respected and efficient member of that august 
body. General Lee, who lived for only five years after 
the close of the war, was never really thought of as a 
traitor. His memory to-day is almost as dear to the 
North as to the South — the fact that he brought his great 
genius to bear against the Union is secondary to that 
Union's pride in him as an American general. 

The Civil War cost America about one million men and 
more than fifteen billions of dollars. This is an enormous 
expenditure; but when it is compared to the lasting gain 
effected by the settlement of two vital questions, it is 
hardly excessive. The first point settled was that of State 
independence. It was proved conclusively that although 
individual States have their rights as apart from the gen- 
eral government, they cannot at will withdraw themselves 
from the union of States. Every State is to the United 
States what a spoke is to a wheel, in itself a complete unit, 
but with a nicely calculated relation to a greater whole. 

The second point settled for all time was that of slavery. 
The scope of the Emancipation Proclamation was en- 
larged by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution 
which, adopted at the close of the war, was ratified in 
December, 1865. This amendment states that "neither 
slaveiy nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within 
the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdic- 
tion"; so after many years the letter of American liberty 
was made law. 



\ 



434 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

That the doctrine which holds that "all men are born 
free and equal" might become a Constitutional fact, an- 
other amendment was proposed by Congress; it provided 
that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or 
by any State on account of race, color, or previous condi- 
tion of servitude"; and it was required that every State 
which had seceded should recognize this amendment and 
admit the negroes to vote before the representatives of the 
States should again be admitted to Congress. 

This condition was very irksome to the South. The 
Southerners had stood by, perforce, while the negroes were 
made free men ; but that had not galled their pride as did 
this demand that they should see the former slaves given 
the same political privileges as those enjoyed by their 
late masters. For five long years the most reluctant 
States withheld their consent from a measure that would 
insure such a state of affairs. But Northern will never 
wavered, and as long as they held out against the amend- 
ment — just so long were the rebelhous States under mili- 
tary rule. Finally, however, the last State capitulated, 
the amendment was passed, and the Union was completely 
reestablished. 

By Lincohi's death the Vice-President, Andrew John- 
son, became President. He did not help on the happy 
reunion of the States, because a mistaken sense of justice 
incited him to work against Congress. Johnson had risen 
from beginnings as humble as Lincoln's own to the high- 
est office in the country, but he had none of Lincoln's 
greatness; his motive power was ambition. A narrow- 
minded man, tenacious of his own opinions because they 
were his own, rather than because they stood for right and 
the greater good, Johnson soon came into collision with 
Congress. He held that as the Union had never recog- 
nized the Confederacy, the Southern States had never 



AFTER THE WAR 435 

been out of the Union. "Therefore," he argued, "the 
rebel States have not lost their right of representation in 
Congress." This was undoubtedly logical but it was not 
practical. States that had defied the Union in one of the 
bloodiest civil wars known to history, could not be treated 
quite as though they had never rebelled ; that would simply 
mean throwing away the advantages gained by the war, 
and would leave the questions upon which the strife had 
turned still unsettled; but Johnson could not be made to 
see this. 

So great were the difference of opinion between the 
President and Congress on several points in regard to re- 
construction that Congress took steps to limit the Chief 
Executive's power. A law was passed forbidding the 
President to make removals from office except with the 
full consent of the Senate. This law Johnson refused 
to obey ; so the House of Representatives voted to impeach 
him : that is, they wanted to bring him to trial in order to 
have him removed as unfit to hold his high office. A 
charge as serious as this has to be made by the House of 
Representatives, and the Senate is the court which must 
decide the case. As it happened that less than two thirds 
of the Senate voted to remove Johnson, he remained in of- 
fice to the end of his term and the country was spared a 
public fiasco. It was a bad time, however ; Lincoln's strong 
hand was missed from the helm of public affairs much 
more than if he had been succeeded by a man of greater 
political tact. 

The next election turned on the dispute of measures for 
best helping the Southern States. The Democrats nomi- 
nated Horatio Seymour, of New York, for the Presi- 
dency ; but the Republican party had a stronger candidate 
in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, who already had won 
popular confidence in his capacity as a general. Grant 
was elected the eighteenth President of the United States 



436 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in 1868. It was during his administration, in 1870, that 
the last of the States which had belonged to the Confed- 
eracy complied with the conditions demanded by Congress. 
This meant that for the first time since 1860, when South 
Carolina had seceded, all the States of the Union were 
represented in Congress. The same red letter year, 1870, 
saw the negroes in every State of the Union invested with 
the right to vote. 

It is not to be supposed that because the chains of 
slavery were struck away the negro at once stood forth a 
perfect citizen. Development is a process, not a happen- 
ing, and it would be as senseless to expect a tree to burst 
immediately from tight bud into full-grown leaf, as to 
imagine that a race of people who for centuries had been 
bound by servitude both of soul and body could be trans- 
formed without years of freedom and education. Even 
to-day — fifty years after the close of the Civil War — al- 
though the negro has traveled far along the road of de- 
velopment, he has not reached his majority, and the United 
States is still confronted by what is vaguely termed a 
"color problem." In those early years of reconstruction 
this problem was very serious. Here was the negro 
tlirown suddenly into conditions of life utterly new to 
him — the torch of freedom was lighted to his hand, but 
he was as a child who knew not the meaning of fire. Small 
wonder that there were numerous conflagrations before 
he learned that the "red flower" of liberty is a blessing 
only to him who uses it with discretion. 

The ignorance of the negroes laid them open to the de- 
ffradinof influence of white men's vices. Manv of them 
drank, gambled, and led disreputable lives in the pitiful 
belief that they were thus demonstrating their new-found 
freedom. Their illiteracy made them the prey of corrupt 
politicians; for the South was invaded by a hord of North- 
ern adventurers who were known as "carpetbaggers." 



AFTER THE WAR 437 

These unprincipled scoundrels bought the negroes* 
votes by bribes of office which the black men were utterly 
unfitted to hold. Life in some of the Soutliern States, 
where local government was in the hands of the "carpet- 
baggers'* and their foolish tools, became perfectly intol- 
erable for the whites. It seemed as though the Southern 
aristocrat was right in declaring that if the negroes were 
allowed to vote "bedlam would be let loose." In order 
to counteract the shameful state of affairs the Southern 
whites — original secessionists and Unionists alike — or- 
ganized a secret society known as the *'Ku Klux Klan," 
the one object of which was to put an end to "carpetbag" 
rule. 

The workings of this society proved how well the South- 
erners understood the negro, who was still half-savage in 
his superstitious fear of the unknown. The members of 
the Klan rode forth at night, disguised and masked, to 
wreak swift vengeance on offenders. A negro leader who 
had lent himself to unscrupulous practises was liable to be 
hauled from his bed, or caught as he stepped from his 
door by a group of muffled figures who dealt with him in 
a silence that was awful to the ghost-ridden mind of the 
black man. He was threshed within an inch of his life, or 
his house was burned before his eyes, or perhaps he was 
smeared with tar and rolled in feathers ; but whatever the 
punisliment agreed upon by the silent tribunal of his 
judges, it was carried out with a swiftness and precision 
that amounted to an art. Woe to the negro who came 
home in the dusk to find a "death candle" burning on his 
doorstep — his crime was held worthy of the great penalty 
from which there is no appeal; he might throw himself 
on the mercy of his friends ; he might hide ; but sooner or 
later the Ku Klux Klan would take him, and until it did, 
his life was lived in a horror of suspense. Even some of 
the white "carpetbaggers" were treated to the summary 



438 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

justice of LjTich Law — that hateful, swift punishment 
that waits for no observance of legal forms. 

It is interesting to try to trace the origin of this most 
lawless law. Some historians believe that it is named 
after Charles Lynch, a Virginia Judge, who is said to have 
dealt out irregular justice; others say that it took its name 
from Lynch's Creek, in South Carolina, where offenders 
were sometimes done to death without legal sanction. A 
more probable explanation, however, is found in a story 
from Ireland. A man named LjTich, governor of Gal- 
way, had a son who killed a Spanish seaman. Lynch, 
hearing of the outrage, and not knowing who was the 
perpetrator of the crime, condemned the mm-derer to death 
without trial. Discovering that it was his ot\ti son he had 
convicted, the father, true to his word, had the boy hanged 
from the middle window of his house. About this old 
story there is a smack of inide justice that gives an air of 
glamour to an utterly wrong and inhuman law. 

Against the wily "carpetbaggers" and their dangerous 
opponents the Government tried to legislate in vain, and 
it finally became necessarj^ for President Grant to send 
Federal troops into some of the Southern States to sup- 
press disorder and enforce law. For a time the little 
army was kept busy; wherever it appeared resistance 
ceased at once, only to break out elsewhere. Eventually, 
however, the trouble quieted down. The "carpetbaggers," 
who worked for Republican interests, were put out of of- 
fice by a strong combination of whites who carried the 
poles for the Democratic party. The negroes, brought 
under the authority of men whom they respected, be- 
haved more rationally and the real regeneration of the 
South began. 

The States which had been so greatly exhausted by the 
war began to revive. The North had supplied food and 
clothing to tide the Southerners over the first months of 



AFTER THE WAR 439 

privation and the people themselves had gone speedily to 
work to restore their broken fortunes. The land was 
theirs; the demand for cotton was insatiable; and paid 
negroes worked as well, if not better, than slaves. Cot- 
ton-mills sprang up and iron manufactures were de- 
veloped with great success. In an incredibly short time 
the South was on the way to financial prosperity, and de- 
spite the undoubted difficulties of readjustment the Ameri- 
cans realized that the peace which followed the Civil War 
found them a more united people than ever before. The 
Government had gloriously withstood the shock of con- 
flict and had proved itself worthy of the great minds that 
had conceived it. Buoyant of heart and unfaltering in 
faith, the people of the United States faced the future and 
the solution of whatever problems it might bring. Their 
national hj^mn rang with a splendid presage of fulfilment : 

"Our father's God, to Thee, 
Author of liberty, 

To Thee we sing: 
Long may our land be bright 
With freedom's holy light; 
Protect us by Thy might. 

Great God, our Kingl" 



CHAPTER LXXI 

THROUGH SIX ADMINISTRATIONS. 1868 TO 1892 

PRESIDENT GRANT took with him to the 
White House that same vigorous energy and 
quick grasp of affairs which had characterized 
his generalship. His administration bristled with re- 
form, for he did not hesitate to put out of office men whom 
he thought unsuitable, nor to appoint others in their stead ; 
and by his fearless disregard for his own popularity, he 
made many enemies. 

In his management of foreign relations Grant was par- 
ticularly successful. During his administration a ques- 
tion that for some time had obtruded unpleasantly be- 
tween Great Britain and the United States was finally set- 
tled. This was a controversy that had arisen at the time 
of the Civil War, when ships had been secretly built in 
England to aid the Confederate Government in its resist- 
ance of United States authority. These British-built 
ships received Confederate commissions and put to sea 
with the avowed purpose of ruining Northern commerce. 
The most notorious of them was the Alabama and its 
career seriously interfered with United States interests, 
for it destroyed about sixtj^-seven merchant and whaling 
ships before it was sunk in the English Channel by the 
Union man-of-war Kearsarge. When the war was over 
the United States claimed damages from the British Gov- 
ernment on account of the hurt done to American shipping 
by the Alabama and other English-built Confederate 
cruisers. For years the "Alabama Claims," as they were 

440 



THROUGH SIX ADMINISTRATIONS 441 

called, were the source of bitter discussion; but in 1871 
they were submitted to a court of arbitration which sat 
in Geneva, Switzerland, and it was decided that Great 
Britain should pay $15,500,000 as damages to the United 
States. 

When war broke out between France and Germany, 
President Grant issued a proclamation of neutrality as to 
the belligerent nations and directed the United States min- 
ister to remain in Paris and to extend the protection of the 
American flag to persons of all nationalities who were 
without the protection of their own flag. This humane 
act saved much suffering and loss to individuals. 

In 1872 the time had come for a new Presidential elec- 
tion. A party had sprung up composed of men who dis- 
approved of Grant's administration; they called them- 
selves "Liberal Republicans" and nominated Horace 
Greeley for President. The Democrats also accepted 
Greeley as their candidate ; but in spite of this two-fold op- 
position. Grant was reelected by a large majority. 

His second term of office was not particularly eventful, 
although it proved a period of steady growth for the na- 
tion. "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than 
war," and the President had the felicity of winning many 
a bloodless battle against unscrupulous office-holders and 
the like. He retired from the Presidency in 1877 and 
started on a visit to the countries of the Old World. 
Abroad he was received with the honors due him, botli as 
a great general and as ex-President of the United States. 

In 1876 Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the Republi- 
can candidate for the Presidency, while Samuel J. Tilden, 
of New York, was the nominee of the Democratic party. 
The election was so closely contested that Congress was 
left to decide whether Hayes or Tilden should be Presi- 
dent, but even here there was a difficulty. The Republi- 
cans had a majority in the Senate, while the Democrats 



442 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

predominated in the House; so the two bodies could not 
agree. Finally the question was referred to fifteen com- 
missioners, eight of whom voted for Hayes, who became 
President of the United States in consequence of that one 
vote in his favor. During his term of office, business pros- 
pered. The brotherly feeling between North and South 
progressed steadily; and so satisfactory to the country 
was Hayes' benign rule that in 1880 the people felt that 
they could do no better than to select another Republican 
for President; consequently General James Abram Gar- 
field was elected to be the twentieth President of the 
Repubhc. 

Garfield, like Lincoln, rose to his great position at the 
head of the nation from very humble beginnings. Born 
and reared in a log cabin, in a lonely part of Ohio, he had 
early known hard work and real privation. But so cease- 
lessly, both as bo}^ and man, did he pursue his studies and 
turn to accoimt the gifts with which nature had endowed 
him that it was truthfully said of him that "among the 
pubhc men of his era, none had higher qualities of states- 
manship and greater culture than James A. Garfield." 
During the Civil War he distinguished himself in more 
than one campaign; and in New York, when the people 
were in a panic over the news of Lincoln's death, it was 
Garfield who calmed the excited mob by the famous words 
spoken from the balcony of the customs-house. "Fellow- 
citizens," he called in a ringing voice, "clouds and dark- 
ness are around him ; his pavilion is dark waters and thick 
clouds; justice and judgment are the established of his 
throne ; mercy and truth shall go before his face ! Fellow- 
citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washing- 
ton lives." 

Three months after his inauguration as President, Gar- 
field was passing through a railway station in Washing- 
ton, when he was shot by a disappointed office-seeker. 



THROUGH SIX ADMINISTRATIONS 443 

Badly wounded, he was carried to the White House, where 
for ten weeks he hngered between hfe and death. Then 
his condition seemed to improve and he was moved to the 
seaside, in the hope that the stimulating air would help 
on his recoverj^; but on September 19th he died. The 
dastardly crime that had shot him down, in the prime of a 
splendid manhood, together with the wonderful patience 
with which Garfield bore his weeks of suffering, greatly 
impressed the American people. This second martyred 
President was mourned very deeply, although men tried 
to remember his words, "God reigns, and the Government 
at Washington lives." 

The Vice-President, Chester Alan Arthur, took up the 
duties of Chief Executive and successfully filled out Gar- 
field's term of office. 

The Presidential election of 1884 was a Democratic tri- 
umph. Grover Cleveland, the popular Governor of New 
York, was elected and the Republican party was defeated 
for the first time since 1860. This was not accomplished, 
however, without a severe struggle and recourse to the per- 
sonalities and bitterness that play such an unworthy part 
in modern politics. Growth involves the knowledge of 
good and evil, and a country as large and as precocious as 
the United States cannot escape its gTowing-pains. 
Wrong has a more raucous voice than Right and so it is 
oftener heard screaming in the market-place; but under- 
neath all the impurities of party strife and the ugly creed 
of gain, the noble American ideals are alive and vigorous. 
The clean-living, pure-hearted America in which George 
Washington and Abraham Lincoln believed is still vital, 
still surcharged with a love of liberty that neither cor- 
rupt political methods nor the greed of a few money-mad 
citizens can destroy. 

President Cleveland was a native of New Jersey. The 
son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied law and rose to 



444 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

his prominent position in the country by dint of his own 
abihty. He was a bachelor at the time of his inaugura- 
tion, and his sister, Rose Cleveland, helped him in his 
social duties. But in June, 1886, the President married 
JNIiss Frances Folsom, the daughter of hi^ one-time law- 
partner. The wedding took place in the White House, 
and the charming bride, the youngest mistress of the Exec- 
utive jNIansion since the lovely Dolly jNIadison, excited 
greiit admiration in the hearts of the American people. 
A talented and beautiful woman, she was well fitted for 
her position as the First Lady of the Land. 

One of the earliest measures with which Cleveland had 
to deal was that of civil service reform. For years it had 
been an understood thing that the President should pay 
his party expenses by giving the minor offices to his ad- 
herents. Garfield's death at the hands of a disappointed 
office-seeker called general attention to this abominable 
system and gave rise to the Pendleton Act of 1883. This 
Act provided that the power of the Chief Executive to 
select office-bearers should be held in check by a board of 
civil service commissioners instructed to pass judgment 
upon all appointments recommended by the President. 
With the Democratic administration came the test. 
Would Cleveland throw^ out the Republican office-holders 
and substitute men of his owti party ? He did nothing of 
the kind, but kept so faithfully to the Pendleton Act that 
for the first time in more than fifty years no general 
change of office-bearers took place. This broad-minded- 
ness made a very "favorable impression upon the country 
at large; for it had been unpleasant to think of the Presi- 
dent in the role of a glorified Jack Horner pulling out 
plums of office for his political friends. 

The subject, however, that was of most vital interest 
during Cleveland's administration, was that of tariff re- 
form. For many years opinion in America had been di- 



THROUGH SIX ADMINISTRATIONS 445 

vided over this important question. Some statesmen held 
that it was only fair to protect American labor by levying 
a high duty on articles manufactured abroad, thus con- 
straining people to buy goods made in their own country. 
But others believed that high protective duties were un- 
just to American consumers and that they were little, if 
any, help to the manufacturers. The tariff, they argued, 
should be used only to raise money to support the Gov- 
ernment; and since the treasury was well stocked with 
funds which excessive revenue had brought in, it was time 
to reduce the duties on certain articles and put others on 
the free list. President Cleveland proposed, in a letter 
to Congress, that the tariff be reduced; and there ensued 
a heated discussion of the matter. The Democrats 
strongly upheld Cleveland's views, while the Republicans 
denounced them, declaring themselves "uncompromisingly 
in favor of the American system of protection." On this 
dispute the election of 1888 turned. The Democrats 
nominated Cleveland for reelection; but the Republican 
candidate, Benjamin Harrison, was elected twenty-third 
President of the United States. 

Harrison's election touched the romantic minds of the 
American people; for not only was he the grandson of 
General William Henry Harrison, who had been ninth 
President of the United States, but his genealogy could be 
traced back to Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who mar- 
ried John Rolfe of Virginia. Born in North Bend, Ohio, 
Harrison studied law at Miami University and settled in 
Indianapolis, Indiana. He entered the army at the out- 
break of the Civil War, as a second lieutenant and rose 
to the rank of brigadier-general. When Garfield was 
made President he offered Harrison a place in his cabinet ; 
but it was refused. In 1881 Harrison entered the United 
States Senate where he served until 1887. As President 
he showed himself business-like and dignified. He kept 



446 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

a firm hand on the management of domestic affairs, and 
his foreign poHcy was such as helped forward the prosper- 
ity of the people at home and kept peace with all nations. 
He did not serve for more than the one term, because the 
Democratic party worked up its strength and succeeded 
in electing Cleveland again in 1892. In his last message 
to Congress, President Harrison gave voice to a growing 
.American sentiment when he said: "There is no reason 
why the national influence, power, and prosperity should 
not observe the same rate of increase that has characterized 
the past thirty j^ears. We carry the great impulse and 
increase of these years into the future. There is no reason 
why, in many lines of production, w^e should not surpass all 
other nations, as w^e have already done in some. There 
is no near frontier to our possible development." 



CHAPTER LXXII 

AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Then turn, and be not alarmed, O Libertad — turn 

your undying face 
To where the future, greater than all the past, 
Is swiftly, surely preparing for you. 

Walt Whitman. 

ACCORDING to the first census, in 1790, there 
were less than four million inhabitants of the 
United States. One hundred years later, when 
the census of 1890 was taken, the population had increased 
to seventy millions! Already there were more people in 
the United States than in any European nation except 
Russia; and the growth of the country's wealth was as 
astonishing as its gain in population. The steady march 
of progress had been only temporarily impeded by the 
Civil War, and it seemed as though the few years of gloom 
it entailed acted as a dam on the energy of the American 
people, for as soon as the war was at an end the flood-gates 
of vigorous activity were opened wide. 

It had become evident that in order to get at the mag- 
nificent resources of their country the Americans must 
have railways to span the continent from east to west; 
so with Herculean labor an iron road was made across the 
desert and its way blasted through the fastnesses of the 
Rocky Mountains. Where the railway went people fol- 
lowed ; and the great West, so long a region of vague sur- 
mise, was divided off into territories and states. At the 
beginning of the Civil War there were thirty-four States 

447 



448 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in the Union; by 1876 when the Repubhc celebrated its 
hundredth birthday there were thirty-eight States. To- 
day there are forty-eight. 

The settlement of the Western States was not an en- 
tirely peaceful business; for the fierce Indians of the 
plains resented the advance of the white people and feared 
their "fire-eating monsters." Some of the eastern bands of 
Sioux Indians raided the defenseless settlements of jMinne- 
sota and killed nearly five hundred people. A war fol- 
lowed and the Indians were driven out of the State after 
about forty of them had been captured and hanged be- 
cause they were convicted of murdering women and chil- 
di'en. 

In 1868 the Indians became so unruly that the Gov- 
ernment had to send General Custer with troops to pre- 
serve order in the West. The Indians of the plains were 
said to be "the best light cavalry in the world." They 
rode a breed of small ponies that were descended from 
horses that they had bought, or stolen, years before from 
the early Spanish conquerors of ^Mexico. Astride these 
tough little mounts the warring Red ]Men would dash in 
on a lonely settlement, fire the houses, kill the inhabitants, 
and ride away again before justice could overtake them. 
Their raids were made in the summer, when there was 
plenty of grass for their ponies. In the winter they 
would go into hiding in some high crevice of the moun- 
tains where the difliculty of following them made them 
comparatively safe from attack. It was in November 
that Custer got on the trail of a war party led by Chief 
Black Kettle. The first snow^s of winter had fallen, dead- 
ening sound, and the white men were able to follow their 
unconscious guides to within bowshot of a town beside 
the Washita River. When night came, and the Indians 
were peacefully sleeping, Custer and his men stole in upon 
them. The braves, roused by the barking of their dogs, 



AMERICAN EXPANSION 449 

rushed out to fight; but they were too late; the surprise 
had been effectual and the white men were in possession of 
the town and in no mood to be trifled with. The Indians 
were conquered that time; but eight years later they had 
their revenge, when a band of savages of the northern 
plains, led by Chief Sitting Bull, met Custer and his men 
in battle and succeeded in massacring the General and 
every man under his immediate command. This killing 
of white men was swiftly avenged by United States 
troops, who drove the Indians across the Canadian border; 
although later they were permitted to return to their 
homes. 

Other Indian uprisings were speedily put down, until 
the Red Man learned that he was mastered, and that he 
must either submit to being civilized or perish. Laws 
were then made for his protection, and although the great 
plains were no longer his to roam at wiU, a sufliciency of 
land was set aside for his hunting-ground. He was taught 
how to lay out a farm, and schools were built for his chil- 
dren; so although the savage had sung his swan song and 
the days of the war-path were over, the Indian was given 
his chance to march with modern civilization. 

The United States not only was growing within its own 
compass. In 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia for 
the sum of $7,200,000. This new territory covered an 
area of 590,884 square miles; but as it did not adjoin the 
rest of the country, and because it lay partly in the arctic 
region and had a very severe climate, little interest was 
taken in its acquisition. The purchase of Alaska by the 
Government even met with bitter opposition from some 
Americans, who could see no good reason for buying a 
bleak land where the only important business interest was 
the killing of seals for their furs. These persons changed 
their minds, however, when gold was found in the Klon- 
dike district (in Canada, just over the border from 



450 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Alaska) in 1896; for the discovery drew great crowds to 
the gold-jfield, the California boom was repeated, and 
Alaska sprang to life. Towns grew up with amazing 
rapidity, a railway was run across the interior and the 
real resources of the district began to be tapped. Since 
1906 Alaska has sent a delegate to Congress; and al- 
though the true commercial importance of the territory is 
more the future than the present, the gold, silver, platinum 
and copper that are found there bid fair to make it a 
worthy possession, quite apart from the importance of its 
growing fisheries, fish-packing industries, and the old busi- 
ness of seal hunting. 

In 1898 the United States annexed the Hawaiian Is- 
lands in the North Pacific Ocean, thus ending a period of 
revolution in the Islands that was most trying for the 
mixed population of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and 
natives of Hawaii. Two years later the Islands were or- 
ganized as a Territory, and they now have a Governor, 
a House of Representatives and a Senate, and send a 
delegate to Congress. The United States has an in- 
terest also in the Samoan group of Islands in the South 
Pacific, and it was these far-away possessions and their 
inhabitants that inspired an American Consul-General to 
write a witty poem called Expansion, which concludes 
with these words : 

"Nex' you know you'll ask a feller 
Wliur he's frum, he'll up an' say 
With a lordly kind o' flourish, 
*A11 creation, U. S. A. 



> >> 



Grover Cleveland's second term as President (1892- 
1896) is memorable chiefly as a time of great unrest. A 
financial panic had arisen out of the tariff dispute and the 
hoarding of gold in the country aggravated the trouble. 
Uabo;»^ disturbances resulted — the United States suffered 



AMERICAN EXPANSION 451 

from a very bad attack of "growing-pains." When the 
time came for another Presidential election, the Demo- 
cratic party nominated William Jennings Bryan of Ne- 
braska for their candidate, but the Republicans won the 
contest, by a large majority, for their nominee, William 
McKinley. 

McKinley was inaugurated the twenty-fifth President 
of the United States in March, 1897. Like Harrison, he 
was an Ohio man, born at Niles in 1843, and he had served 
as a volunteer in the Civil War. In 1867 he was called to 
the Bar, and a few years later he was elected a member 
of Congress. In 1890 he introduced the McKinley Tariff 
Bill which made him famous — a measure for protecting 
home manufacturers by putting higher duties on various 
imports. In 1891 McKinley was elected Governor of 
Ohio, and it was from this office that he was called to the 
Presidency. 

Personally McKinley was a practical idealist and a 
thoroughly lovable man. He was deeply religious, but 
with no taint of bigotry. Mrs. McKinley was an invalid, 
so the President, in addition to his multifarious labors, was 
obliged to take many of her social duties upon himself. 
As a host he is unsurpassed in White House annals; his 
kindness of heart made him wonderfully sympathetic and 
he never spared pains to put his most insignificant guest 
at ease. 

Except Lincoln, perhaps no President up to that time 
had a more difficult course to steer than did McKinley. 
In his inaugural address he declared his sincere conviction 
that "war should never be entered upon until every agency 
of peace has failed." "Peace," he said, "is preferable to 
war in almost every contingency" ; yet during his adminis- 
tration the United States was plunged into a war with 
Spain that grew out of American intervention in the af- 
fairs of Cuba. 



CHAPTER LXXIII 

WAR WITH SPAIN 

BY" the middle of the nineteenth century Spanish em- 
pire in the West had dwindled until Cuba and 
Porto Rico were all that remained of Spain's one- 
time glorious possessions in America. 

Cuba, the largest of the West Indian Islands, had been 
Spanish property since Columbus fu'st discovered it in 
1492. The Spaniards, however, were always hard task- 
masters, and in 1868 the Cubans tried in vain to wrest 
their independence from the mother country. Their little 
revolution was put down after ten j^-ears of fruitless suffer- 
ing, only to break out again in 1895, when the oppressions 
of the Spaniards grew quite unbearable. 

With the sympathetic interest of a nation that has 
fought the same fight, the United States watched the Cu- 
bans struggling for freedom. The people of the great 
Republic were incensed at the cruel and barbarous meth- 
ods that Spain used to crush the revolt against her rule. 
Having quartered two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers 
on the island, only to find that the Cuban insurgents were 
quite equal to dealing with them, the Spanish Government 
next tried what starvation would do to put down revolu- 
tion. The country people were deprived of almost all 
food and driven into great concentration camps where, 
herded together, men, women and little children died either 
of hunger or from the insanitary conditions of their sur- 
roundings. Half a million persons, mostly civilians, were 
done to death in this cruel waj% and then the country, 

452 



WAR WITH SPAIN 453 

cleared of its inhabitants, was laid waste with fire by the 
Spanish soldiery. 

Humane America could not look on at tliis brutal war- 
fare unmoved ; and besides the broad consideration of suf- 
fering fellow-beings in need of sympathy, there were the 
interests of many citizens of the United States to be con- 
sidered. What was to be done? "Formally recognize 
the belligerency of the Republic of Cuba," was the popular 
answer ; for the Americans knew that recognition of Cuba 
would entail its protection, because an important clause of 
the famous Monroe Doctrine expressly states : "With the 
existing colonies or dependencies of any European power 
we have not interfered. But with the governments who 
have declared their independence, and maintained it, and 
whose independence we have, on great consideration and 
on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any 
interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or in con- 
trolling in any other manner their destiny, by any Euro- 
pean power, in any other light than as the manifestation 
of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." 

Cleveland had refused to grant the insurgents of Cuba 
recognition as an independent people; so as soon as Mc- 
Kinley came into office fresh clamor arose, for national 
sj'^mpathy was strong in favor of Free Cuba. Spain, by 
not "plaj^ing the game" of war more fairly, had roused 
America's deep resentment. With great political tact, 
however, the new President kept the curb on public senti- 
ment while he tried to remonstrate with Spain in a friendly 
way. He offered, in the name of humanity, a strong 
protest against the cruel tactics employed in Cuba and 
demanded that the war be conducted along the lines laid 
down by civilized nations. 

The Spanish Government received this implied rebuke 
very affably, replying that hostilities would be conducted 
in a manner that should better conform to the wishes of 



454 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the United States. President ^IcKinley rejoiced, hoping 
that intervention in Cuban affairs might not be necessary. 
To help the destitute insurgents, however, a Central Cu- 
ban Relief Committee was established in New York in 
December, 1807, and the President appealed to the Amer- 
ican people to give of their Christmas plenty to relieve 
the suffering Cubans. The response was whole-hearted 
and generous; but gifts could be only a temporary benefit 
to the inliabitants of the West Indian Island, who craved 
not charity but freedom. 

Affairs in Cuba continued to be so turbulent that in 
Jamiary the I'^nited States Government sent the second- 
class battleship Maine to Havana, to be at hand in case 
American citizens there should need protection against 
Spanish royalists, who threatened to mob them because of 
their known sympathy for the revolutionists. Spain af- 
fected to approve the visit of the Maine to Cuban waters, 
and even asked permission to return the courtesy by send- 
ing Spanish ships to the chief ports of the United States. 
While the Maine lay hi Havana harbor her officers were 
treated with the most pimctilious ceremony by Spanish 
officials. Captain Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, 
reported no single breach of etiquette, although he was 
aware of an undercurrent of distrust. To show his good- 
will toward the islanders, the Captain attended a bull-tight 
with some of his officers, and there some one thrust into his 
hand a dirty paper containing a bombastic protest against 
"the Yankee pigs" for sending "a man-of-war of their 
rotten squadron" to taunt the Spaniards. General Fitz- 
hugh Juee, the American Consul-Gencral in Havana, re- 
ceived many anonymous letters containing threats. Also, 
there had been some unpleasantness over a private letter 
that had fallen into the hands of a Cuban sympathizer. 
This letter was written by the Spanish ^linister at Wash- 
ington and contained lurid insults directed against Presi- 




TO TIIKIK DEATH TWO oFl-K Kl;> ANU 



\l SIIII' SAXK AT OX( E. TAKINc; 

TWO lirXDUKK AND SIXTY-KOIU EN' I.ISTKI) MEN 



WAR WITH SPAIN 455 

dent McKinley. The Spanish Government had been 
quick to apologize for this indiscretion on the part of its 
servant and had withdrawn the erring Senor from Wash- 
ington; so there was no open hostihty between Spain and 
the United States when, without warning, the Maine was 
blown up as she lay at her moorings in Havana harbor. 

It was at forty minutes past nine in the evening of Feb- 
ruary 15th, 1898, that the explosion occurred. The great 
ship sank at once, taking to their death two officers and 
two hundred and sixty-four enlisted men. Spanish of- 
ficials helped to rescue some of the crew and they after- 
ward paid elaborate funeral honors to the dead. Spain 
protested that she was not responsible for the calamity; 
and the naval court of inquiry, which made a thorough in- 
vestigation of the matter, could never locate responsibility 
for the crime. Evidence proved that the catastrophe was 
caused by the explosion of a submarine mine, but more 
definite knowledge will probably never be forthcoming. 

The destruction of the Maine came as a serious shock to 
the United States and roused latent antagonism against 
Spain. The American people were eager to dispense with 
diplomacy and resort to the argument of force. The 
whole country agreed that it would be best for every one if 
Cuba were independent, and the Spanish driven out of 
America. President McKinley took a firm stand and de- 
clared in a message to Congress that "the war in Cuba 
must stop," and he asked for power to enforce this de- 
cision. 

As quietly as possible the United States prepared for 
war. Money had already been voted for national defense, 
and now two additional regiments of artillery were raised 
and the regular army was concentrated at points where 
it would be most readily available for active service in 
Cuba. As soon as Spain had been informed of the Ameri- 
can ultimatum and had refused to comply with its terms. 



4^56 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Congress gave the President power to stop the exportation 
by sea of coal and all other war materials. A call was 
issued for 125,000 men to make up a volunteer army, and 
the regular army was placed on a war footing with its 
numbers raised to 61,000. Nothing was left undone that 
would assure fighting supremacy to the United States. 
The American Government might have been acting on the 
advice of Polonius to his son: "Beware of entrance to a 
quarrel ; but, being in, bear't that the opposed may beware 
of thee." War was formally declared against Spain on 
the 24th of April, 1898. 

In spite of his ruthless procedure in Cuba, it is not 
to be supposed that the Spaniard was an enemy to be de- 
spised. He proved a gallant and intelligent foe as weU 
as a brave soldier and sailor; a fact which put the war on 
a much more interesting level than if it had been fought 
against cowards and rascals. By the nature of things, the 
Spanish-American War was mainly a naval conflict. 
When hostilities began, Spain's naval forces were di- 
vided into three parts : one, which remained in home waters, 
was commanded by Admiral Camara ; a second, under Ad- 
miral Cervera, was cruising about the Cape Verde Islands; 
and the third, in charge of Admiral Montojo, lay at the 
Philippines, in the Pacific Ocean. 

Now the United States Navy was not, numerically, 
quite so large as that of Spain; but in grim earnest the 
American fleet donned its war-paint, changing its white 
ships of peace to a stealthy gray, and went to meet the 
Spaniards. The enthusiasm of all classes of American 
fighting men was remarkable. There were no laggards; 
the desire of every sailor and soldier seemed to be for the 
thick of danger. When war was declared, Commodore 
George Dewey was at Hong Kong with part of the Amer- 
ican fleet; so he was ordered to make for the Philippine 
Islands and to capture or destroy Admiral ^lontojo's 



WAR WITH SPAIN 457 

naval forces. Captain Sampson, whose squadron lay at 
Key West, was given the rank of rear-admiral and put in 
command of the North Atlantic; while Commodore Schley 
was stationed, with what was known as the flying squad- 
ron, in Hampton Roads. 

On May 1st Dewey, having safely reached the Philip- 
pines, attacked the enemy in ^lanila Bay. Within a few 
hours he either burnt or sunk all the Spanish ships of 
Montojo's command, except some small launches and tugs 
which he captured. He then took possession of the forti- 
fied seaport town of Cavite. Never was there a more 
speedy victory nor one, on so large a scale, that was accom- 
panied by so few casualties. The Spanish loss, in killed 
and wounded, amounted to only 381 ; while of the Ameri- 
cans seven men were slightly wounded, but none was 
killed. Dewey established a blockade of Manila, but the 
city was invested, on the north and east, by Filipino forces 
led by Aguinaldo. The United States, therefore, dis- 
patched ]M a j or- General Merritt with an expeditionary 
force to deal with the native troops in the Philippines. 
The argument of shot and shell prevailed, for on the 13th 
of August, 1898, Manila surrendered to a combined attack 
of American military and naval forces. 

In the meantime, war in the Atlantic had sped less 
swiftly. For some time the Spanish fleet, with Admiral 
Cervera at its head, was searched for in vain by both 
Sampson and Schley, and not until the last of May, 1898, 
was it discovered to be lying quietly in the harbor of San- 
tiago de Cuba. To prevent its escape was the immediate 
concern of American naval authorities, and Admiral 
Sampson decided that the best way to do this would be to 
sink a vessel at the narrowest part of the harbor entrance, 
in such a way as to block up the exit. Naval Constructor 
Richmond Pearson Hobson was entrusted with the deli- 
cate work of sinking a ship at exactly the right moment, 



458 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in precisely the one spot where it would best act as a stop- 
per to the harbor mouth. 

The collier Merrimac was selected for sacrifice and in 
the hour before dawn, of June 3rd, the black hulk crept, 
ghostlike, toward its predestined grave. She was manned 
by a crew of seven men, who had volunteered for this spe- 
cial service, well knowing that it meant almost certain 
death. 

It is one thing to face death for your country when you 
can go into battle with flags flying and bands playing; it 
is quite another thing to stand defenseless, clad only in 
shirt and drawers, a life-preserver and a revolver belt, 
upon the bare deck of a coal boat, waiting to put a spark 
to the 880 pounds of gunpowder that shall sink the very 
boards under your feet! Yet Hobson and his men, of 
their own free will, faced this grim ordeal with perfect 
composure. 

Five hundred yards from the harbor mouth the collier 
was sighted by the enemy and the Spanish batteries opened 
fire. Shells dropped thickly upon the deck of the Merri- 
mac; but, heedless of their danger, the Americans steamed 
ahead. Just before reaching the spot where the ship was 
to be sunk, the young Captain signaled for the engines to 
stop. The anchors were put down, sea-valves opened, and 
the command given to explode the torpedoes. But with 
their fii-e the enemy had damaged the topedo gear — some 
connection was broken and only two torpedoes could be 
discharged — and now the stearing-gear was shot to pieces, 
and the wreck drifted helplessly away from the place where 
it had been intended she should sink. Powerless to do 
more, Hobson and his men lay flat upon the deck while 
a fresh fury of gun-fire broke over them. Every second 
they expected that an exploding shell would kill them all. 
A floating mine struck the Merrimac s hull; but still she 
careened crazily in mid-channel. Then, without warning, 



WAR WITH SPAIN 459 

she lurched, settled, and went down. The men on her deck 
were washed into the water, where they were tossed ahout 
in a mass of wreckage. They managed, however, to swim 
to a raft, where they clung, with only their heads above 
water, until a Spanish launch appeared. The Americans 
hailed it and were taken on board. Cervera was there and 
to him the crew of the Merrimac surrendered. The Span- 
ish Admiral was himself a brave gentleman, and he 
warmly appreciated bravery in others; no one could have 
been more kind than he was to his prisoners ; his courtesy 
and humanity were such as made him respected by friend 
and foe. 

Hobson's daring mission had failed; but it was one of 
those magnificent failures that live side by side with suc- 
cess. Small wonder that when the American people came 
to hear of the Merrimac s last voyage they wept and 
shouted with admiration: 

"O brave-hearted Hobson, 
O Merrimac crew, 
The pride of a nation 
Pay homage to you." 



CHAPTER LXXIV 

THE END OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAE 

ALTHOUGH the sinking of the Merrimac had 
failed to close the harbor of Santiago, the Ameri- 
cans had no intention of letting the Spanish 
ships escape ; for it was known that upon this part of the 
enemy fleet the future depended. If Cervera's force 
could be destroyed, the power of Spain in the West would 
be broken, Santiago's fall would be assured, and an early 
peace would be inevitable. Sampson, therefore, stationed 
a semicircle of battleships in front of the harbor mouth, to 
see that the Spanish fleet was not allowed to run away. 
He also sent a convoy of cruisers and gunboats to the 
United States for the purpose of escorting back to Cuba 
transports that were bringing an invading army to the 
island. 

The first contingent of troops was landed at Daiquiri, 
fifteen miles east of Santiago, on June 22nd. It was com- 
posed of 14,000 regulars and 2,500 volunteers, under the 
command of General Shafter. These forces moved im- 
mediately in the direction of Santiago, the idea being that 
they should silence the land batteries before the n2Lvy 
opened its attack on the ships in the harbor. The Spanish 
outposts of Las Guasimas were driven in; and on July 1st 
the outworks of Santiago were reached. The next day 
the heights of El Caney and San Juan were carried hy 
assault after a terrible battle, in which one hundred and 
three American ofiicers and one thousand, four hundred 
and ninety-two men were killed or wounded. Almost 

460 



END OF SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 461 

more fatal to the American forces than the actual war, 
however, was the climate of Cuba. JNIalaria and yellow 
fever carried off all too many soldiers : 

"Firing from the trenches hot and sizzling, 

And standing where the water's to the knees ; 
Fighting when the rain is pouring, drizzhng. 
And parched troops are dying for a breeze." 

These were hardships that told heavily on the raw recruits, 
and even on the old campaigners. ^lany a cheerful home 
in the United States was darkened by the shadow of death, 
and during those summer months of anxiety, while the 
lists of the dead grew ever longer, the Americans learned 
to have a wholesome hatred of war and its attendant 
horrors. 

The really great event of the campaign took place on 
July 3rd, when the Spanish fleet, on endeavoring to leave 
the harbor of Santiago, was met by the American squadron 
and utterly destroyed; so that Admiral Sampson was able 
to telegraph to Washington: "The fleet under my com- 
mand offers the nation as a Fourth of July present the 
whole of Cervera's fleet." 

It was a Sunday morning. Fog lay over Santiago Bay, 
but out where the American vessels waited, gently rock- 
ing to the motion of the sea, the sun glanced brightly on an 
ocean of sapphire blue. The battleship Iowa was the 
first to discover that the Spanish ships were moving to- 
ward the harbor entrance — a piece of news which she at 
once announced to her neighbors by two sharp barks from 
one of her six-pounders. "Enemy's ships coming outl" 
her signal flags fluttered; and at once all was ordered ac- 
tion on board the American men-of-war. 

The Infanta Maria Teresa, with Admiral Cervera on 
board, led the Spanish ships into the open and bore off to 



402 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

westward. Evidently the Spaniards were counting on 
their great speed to get them through the hlockading hue 
and away before they could be stopped ; but from the sig- 
nal masts of the American ships sharp orders had been 
fluttering, first "Clear ship for action!" and then "Close 
up!" The engine lires had been kept going night and 
day : all was in readiness ; and with wonderful swiftness the 
ironclads drew in around the fleeing enemy. In less time 
tlian it takes to tell it, a murderous Are was raining upon 
the fugitive ships, smothering the men at the gims so that 
they were incapable of taking accurate aim. The Maria 
T'crcsa staggered under tlie deadly fusillade ; great gashes 
showed ui her armor; her woodwork caught Are; and, a 
blazing wreck, she was forced to run for shore. As she 
struck the rocks the crew of the Ttwas began to cheer ; but 
their captain turned upon them flercely. "Don't cheer, 
boys," he cried; "the poor devils are dying." 

Ship after ship of the proud Spanish fleet was forced 
to run on to the rocks. About 300 Spaniards perished in 
that awful sea-flght, while only one man of the Americans 
was killed and one severely wounded. The United States 
ships were repeatedly struck, but none of them was seri- 
ously damaged. When the last Spanish vessel had been 
dispatched, the Americans drew a long breath of relief and 
then threw themselves into the work of rescue. They could 
not leave the enemy to die on their burning and sinking 
ships; so with high courage they faced grave danger to 
help the very men whom they lately had been trying to 
exterminate. What Captain Evans said in his official re- 
port of his men aboard the lotca, might have been said 
by every captain whose ship was in action on that fate- 
ful Sunday morning in July: "So long as the enemy 
showed his flag, they fought like American seamen; but 
when the flag came down, they were as gentle and tender 
as American women." 



END OF SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 463 

The Maria Teresa was caught on the rocks in such a 
way that a rescue boat could not approach her ; so two sail- 
ors swam through heavy surf with a line which they fast- 
ened on shore, and by means of this a cutter was hauled 
back and forth, carrying nine or ten Spaniards at every 
trip. In this way more than four hundred men were res- 
cued, Admiral Cervera and many of his officers among 
them. Of course Cervera and about sixteen hundred of 
his men were taken prisoners, but it is good to remember 
that they were treated with the utmost courtesy by their 
captors. There was very little personal enmity in the 
Spanish War. Whatever bad feeling there was at the 
beginning seems to have vanished with the first blood-let- 
ting, so that when peace between America and Spain was 
declared the two nations had learned to understand and 
respect each other. The war had cleared the air and made 
friendship possible. 

When the Spanish fleet had been destroyed, Santiago 
could not long hold out. The city surrendered to Gen- 
eral Shafter on July 17th, and its surrender meant the 
capitulation of the entire eastern end of Cuba, and of 
24,000 Spanish soldiers, all of whom the United States 
undertook to return to Spain. 

As soon as Santiago had fallen, the Americans turned 
their attention to Porto Rico. An army under General 
Miles operated on the island, while eleven United States 
men-of-war lay in Porto Rican waters, ready to render 
any assistance that the army might require. Two weeks 
of fighting secured a large portion of the island to the 
Americans; but before the whole was subjugated, hostili- 
ties were suddenly arrested. 

The destruction of her fleets at Manila and Santiago had 
broken the back of Spain's power in America; so that on 
July 22, 1898, the Spanish Government proffered a formal 
request for peace. Terms were agreed upon by which the 



464. STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

United States annexed the Philippines and Porto Rico, 
as indemnity against the cost of the war, and occupied 
Cuba until the island was in a fit state to govern itself. 
An independent Republic was set up in Cuba in May, 1902. 
The Spanish- American War thus ended disastrously for 
Spain; for her last foothold in America was lost to her. 
A curious incident shows that although the Spanish bore 
their misfortunes philosophically, their pride was deeply 
wounded. Scarcely was the war at an end when the Span- 
ish Government had the casket containing the remains of 
Christopher Columbus removed from Havana, where it 
had rested for one hundred and two years, to Seville, in 
Spain. Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in the year 
1506, and was buried in a monastery near Seville; but 
thirty years later his body was removed to Santo Domingo, 
in Hispaniola, and it was from there that it was taken to 
Havana, in 1796. Now it rests in a magnificent sarcopha- 
gus in the beautiful cathedral church of Seville. Four 
allegorical figures in colored bronze, representing respect- 
ively the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Navarre, 
uphold the casket that contains the sacred dust, and on the 
marble base of the elaborate monument there is chiseled an 
inscription referring to the defection of "ungrateful 
America from its mother Spain." It is to be hoped that 
the bones of the great explorer have at last found their 
final tomb. 



CHAPTER LXXV 

CONCERNING THE ADMINISTRATION OF FOUR PRESIDENTS. 
MCKINLEY TO WILSON 

AFTER the war with Spain, the United States 
was in a quandary as to what to do with the 
Phihppines. It is probable that the question 
would have been decided by giving the islands their ulti- 
mate independence, had not the ill-advised action of Agui- 
naldo and his followers convinced President McKinley and 
his advisers that the Filipinos were too fierce and untutored 
a people to be left safely to their own devices. The war- 
like islanders tried to win their immediate independence by 
attacking the United States troops who were stationed in 
the Philippines. Much needless blood was spilt before 
Aguinaldo was captured and peace was restored. For a 
time the islands had to be put under military rule, but that 
soon gave place to the present benign system of adminis- 
tration which is carried on by a civil governor, assisted by 
a mixed commission of Americans and natives. 

It is not to be expected that President McKinley and 
his cabinet escaped criticism in their handling of the Philip- 
pines. Some disgruntled persons even claimed that the 
war with Spain had been prompted entirely by the desire 
of the President to extend the possessions of the United 
States. Such accusations deserve the utmost contempt, 
for the nation as a whole understood the man who was its 
President, and appreciated the broad humanitarian prin- 
ciples upon which his every action was based. 

McKinley was reelected President in 1900, but he had 

465 



466 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

not served a full year of his second term of office when he 
was struck down by the cowardly hand of an anarchist — a 
peculiarly cowardly hand in this case. It was at the Pan- 
American Exposition, in Buffalo, that the President was 
assassinated. He had been much interested in the great 
Exhibition, the object of which was to promote the welfare 
of All- America; and on this sadly memorable 6th of Sep- 
tember, 1901, he was standing in one of the large halls of 
the Exposition, greeting people who filed past him, eager 
for the honor of touching their President's hand. Al- 
though he had stood long enough to be thoroughly weary, 
the welcoming smile never left the President's face. One 
of the wonderful things about McKinley was his readiness 
to give pleasure, and there was nothing perfunctory in his 
simple acceptance of the fact that his people enjoyed shak- 
ing hands with him, nor in his response to the little cere- 
mony that has proved irksome to more than one President 
of a democratic Republic. As he stood, then, greeting the 
crowds with kindly understanding, a dark faced lad — Leon 
Czolgosz — approached IVIcKinley. It was noticed that 
his right hand was tied up in a handkerchief, but there was 
nothing about the young man's demeanor to show that he 
was a member of a secret society whose entirely fruitless 
aim is to put down all existing government by assassinating 
rulers. Czolgosz paused for a second by McKinley's side; 
there was a sharp report — the youth had shot the Presi- 
dent! A revolver had been cunningly concealed within 
the bandaged hand and the anarchist had deliberately 
schemed to kill a defenseless man. 

Characteristically, the wounded President's thought was 
not of himself, but of another, for immediately he asked 
that news of his hurt be broken gently to Mrs. McKinley. 
He lived through a week of agony, but died on the 14th of 
September, and, as is too often the case, the man's great 
worth was fully realized only after he was gone. Under 



Mckinley to wilson 467 

his quiet guidance the country had weathered a serious 
war, fought for a high ideal. The army and navy had 
been placed on a firmer foundation than ever before. In- 
dustrially the United States had gone forward with a 
bound; and the affairs of the country generally were in a 
prosperous condition. Yet it was not so much the Presi- 
dent as the man whom the people mourned. The man 
whose serene, God-fearing example had inspired so many 
hearts with courage, and who had given his countrymen 
such a noble ideal of citizenship. 

On the day of his funeral a strange tribute was paid in 
McKinley's honor. For five minutes, just at noon, every- 
thing in the United States stopped. Express trains, 
street-cars, men and women on the pavements, all waited 
wherever twelve o'clock found them, for those few respect- 
ful moments. The sweet-voiced chimes of Trinity Church, 
in New York, and even the roll of organ music, were dis- 
tinctly audible above the solemn hush, and some one in 
the street began to sing the President's favorite hymn. 
All up and down that crowded thoroughfare the reverent 
people joined in the singing of Nearer, my God, to Thee. 
It was soon over, and the country took up its work again ; 
but that pause for remembrance was not a thing to be 
forgotten. 

The Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, who became 
President on McKinley's death, was the very spirit in- 
carnate of eager, young America. Bom of Dutch- Scot- 
tish descent in New York City, Roosevelt was educated at 
Harvard and had no sooner left college than he began to 
make the world a better place for his having lived in it. 
As a member of the New York Legislature, and as a Civil 
Service Commissioner, and later as the head of the Police 
Department of New York, this enthusiastic young man 
threw himself, heart and soul, into the work of his coun- 
try. 1897 found him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 



468 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

helping to get the fleet in readiness for the threatening war 
with Spain; but when war came, Roosevelt — a thorough 
sportsman and a man of action — left his desk in the Navy 
Department to become Lieutenant- Colonel of the Rough 
Rider regiment. He was foremost in organizing this pic- 
turesque branch of the army, and his contagious enthusi- 
asm made it a powerful factor in Cuba. Back from the 
war Roosevelt, already a popular hero, was elected Gov- 
ernor of New York, and then Vice-President of the United 
States. He became President when he was forty-three 
years of age, and so had the distinction of being the young- 
est President the White House had ever known. 

There was a streak of Peter Pan about the new Presi- 
dent that endeared him mightily to the hearts of the Ameri- 
can people. The spirit of "the boy who never grew up" 
looked out of his eyes and flashed in his smile. He worked 
so hard, and he played so hard, he was so tremendously in 
earnest about everything, and yet had a laugh for his own 
"strenuousness," that he soon became the most popular 
American of his day. He was everywhere admired — or 
detested — as a strong, fearless man, intolerant of abuses 
and militant for right. 

Roosevelt was reelected to the Presidency, by a great 
majority, in 1904. His career was fraught with excite- 
ment, for he made indignant war against "graft" — that 
unlovely system by which one man — or a clique of men — 
stores up illicit spoils wrung from politics or municipal 
business. He fought Trusts that were making a few men 
rich by keeping many poor ; and he worked early and late 
to alleviate the trouble which arose out of these conditions, 
to put down strikes, and to quiet labor disturbances of 
every kind. 

But under Roosevelt's regime the White House was a 
happy place. The stately mansion echoed to the merri- 



Mckinley to wilson 469 

ment of romping boys and girls. Many are the stories 
told of the Roosevelt children, but it is difficult to say 
whether the nation enjoyed most the pranks of the boy 
who, to console a younger brother shut up in the nursery, 
took his Shetland pony upstairs, or the mischief of that 
bigger boy — the President — who was always dodging the 
detectives, set to watch over his precious life, until exist- 
ence became a burden to those much-tried men. 

The Lady of the White House is confronted by in- 
numerable problems of etiquette that seem trivial enough 
in themselves, but that are of great consequence in the 
strange diplomatic world where affairs of State have been 
known to hang on the placing of guests at a dinner-party ! 
Mrs. Roosevelt supplied just the gracious charm and social 
genius necessary to her high position. In every way she 
was her husband's help and complement. 

When Roosevelt retired in 1909, he had the satisfaction 
of being succeeded by his friend William Howard Taft, 
whose election he was instrumental in bringing about. 
Taft had been Solicitor-General in 1890. Two years later 
he was Circuit Judge, and in this capacity he dealt severely 
with railway strikes that were causing much unrest in the 
country. From 1900 to 1904, Taft had administered the 
affairs of the Philippines, and it was he who skilfully sub- 
stituted civil government in place of military rule. \Vlien 
Roosevelt took up his term of office in 1904, he made Taft 
his Secretary of War ; so the twenty-seventh President en- 
tered upon his duties with wide personal knowledge of the 
different departments under him, and his administration 
was carried on with the capable precision that had come 
to be expected of him. Taft's presidency did not prove 
especially eventful, however ; although an important tariff 
reform bill was passed, and a revolution broke out in 
Mexico which was watched with grave interest by the 



470 STORY OF THE UXITED STATES 

United States. In 3Iarch, 1911, the American Govern- 
ment ordered 20,000 soldiers to the border, to keep the 
insurgents back from the frontier: but this was a purely 
protective measure, for Taft issued a proclamation of neu- 
trality where ^lexico was concerned. 

In Februari', 1912, Colonel Roosevelt, who had been 
indulging a passion for big game hunting in Africa, sud- 
denly annomiced that he would again accept the Repub- 
lican nomination for President. It was nearly time for 
another election, and many of Roosevelt's admirers were 
clamoring to have him back at the White House, belie^'ing 
in his fearless methods of dealing with all the forms of 
abuse that menaced public life. Others of the Repub- 
lican •pa.vty thought that Taft, with his less strenuous tac- 
tics, was better suited to be President of the United States ; 
so tlie Repubhcan Convention that met in Chicago in 
June was something of a party quarrel. Taft was re- 
nominated, but Roosevelt's friends broke away from the 
regular Republicans, and organized what they called a 
Progressive Party, with Roosevelt as its nominee. 

The Democrats, meanwhile, at their national convention 
in Baltimore, had selected Dr. Woodrow Wilson for their 
candidate; so the contest for the election of the twenty- 
eighth President proved a three-cornered affair, fraught 
with great excitement. 

The unfortmiate estrangement that necessarily resulted 
between Taft and Roosevelt, caused bitter antagonism in 
their respective parties. In October an attempt was made 
by a man, half crazed with the excitement of the election, 
to assassinate Roosevelt. The Colonel was shot just as he 
was starting to drive to the hall, in Chicago, Avhere he was 
to make one of his rousing speeches. He was severely 
wounded; but with the pluck that distinguishes the man, 
he ignored the injury and insisted on dehvering his ad- 



McKINLEY TO WILSON 471 

dress, or a part of it, although his audience was decidedly 
startled to see that the manuscript, which he drew from his 
breast pocket, was wet with blood ! 

It was the Democratic candidate who won the election 
of November, 1912, and it was that old "Mother of Presi- 
dents" who again furnished the United States with a 
Chief Executive; for Thomas Woodrow Wilson was a 
Virginian, born in the little city of Staunton, and, like 
Cleveland, was the son of a Presbyterian minister. From 
his college days at Princeton his ability, both as a scholar 
and as an orator, was recognized and it was from the Presi- 
dency of his Alma INIater that Woodrow Wilson was called 
to be Governor of New Jersey and, later, President of his 
country. 

In August, 1913, President Wilson tried to act as peace- 
maker in Mexico; but the Mexican Government refused 
his mediation. The Americans were therefore obliged to 
follow a policy of "watchful waiting" while the war raged 
furiously in the neighboring country. In April, 1914, a 
party of United States marines, who landed for supplies, 
were arrested in Tampico. The American Government 
could not ignore such an insult to its subjects. Huerta, 
the Mexican President, briefly apologized for the arrest of 
the marines, but he refused to salute the United States flag, 
as he had been requested to do. In consequence of this 
affront, United States marines, commanded by Rear- Ad- 
miral Fletcher, captured Vera Cruz. For a time war be- 
tween Mexico and the United States seemed unavoidable, 
but the ABC republics of South Ajnerica — Argentina, 
Brazil, and Chile — offered to act as peacemakers between 
the two powers. Their good offices were gratefully ac- 
cepted and a conflict was averted. 

It was not long thereafter that Huerta was forced to 
resign his presidency of Mexico chiefly because of the 



472 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

opposition of the United States. In the turmoil that fol- 
lowed and in the face of great provocations, it was difficult 
for President Wilson to maintain his policy of "watchful 
waiting." When a raid was made upon the town of Co- 
lumbus, New JNIexico, by Francisco Villa and a band of 
his followers, the patience of the United States was ex- 
hausted and American soldiers were sent into JNIexico in 
pursuit of the bandits. This led to great friction with 
Carranza, the Chief of the Constitutionalists. The rela- 
tion with jMexico reached a climax when, in June, 1916, 
two companies of American cavalry were led into an am- 
bush at Carrizal, iSIexico, by Carranza's soldiers and were 
nearly all killed or captured. Feeling ran high in the 
United States and war seemed a certainty when President 
Wilson issued mobilization orders for the national guard 
regiments of all the States in the Union. Happily, how- 
ever, this crisis also was passed and the differences between 
the two govermnents were settled amicably. War with 
JMexico once again was averted. 

President Wilson's administration has been one of vital 
importance because of its relation to the great European 
War which broke out in the summer of 1914; but if it had 
had no other event to characterize it, the Wilson adminis- 
tration would alwaj's be memorable because it saw the 
opening of the Panama Canal: 

That cutting of a Gordian knot 
That saw trade-winds unfurled, 

The linking of two oceans up 
For the commerce of the world. 



CHAPTER LXXVI 

HOW THE DREAM OF COLUMBUS HAS BEEN MORE 
THAN REALIZED 

IN 1893 a great World's Fair was opened in Chicago, 
by President Cleveland, to celebrate the four hun- 
dredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of a 
New World. Only four hundred years — and yet a nation 
had taken root in the West that had offered such strange 
and fearsome adventures to the old voyager. The White 
City, that sprang up radiant and mirage-like beside Lake 
Michigan, reflected, as in a magic mirror, the whole story 
of America's history. Looking over the shimmering Fair, 
with its domes and minarets, its electric fountains and its 
halls of industry, one's eyes came back to a still lagoon 
where facsimiles of the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the 
Nina lay anchored — those frail cockle-shells that, laden 
with a cargo of dreams, had sailed from Palos into a name- 
less sea, and had awakened this vast Americn ! 

Columbus sought a westward sea-route to India, and 
died thinking he had found it; but we know how much 
more important was the prize he had found. The greater 
always includes the less, however, and almost since the day 
when Balboa had stood gazing upon the rolling waters of 
the Pacific, men had realized that if a canal could be cut 
across the narrow strip of land between North and South 
America, in such a way as to link the Atlantic and the 
Pacific Oceans together, the dream of a westward sea- 
route to the East would at last be fulfilled. 

Many countries had discussed the project of cutting a 

473 



474 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

canal across the isthmus, but no practical progress was 
made. During Grant's administration, he strongly rec- 
ommended to the people of the United States the advisabil- 
ity of having a canal under American control ; but before 
the idea could be developed, the French liad plunged into 
a colossal canal scheme in Central America and it looked 
as though tlie United States had lost the chance of con- 
structing and controlling the link that was to unite the 
oceans. However, after several years of work and an 
enormous expenditure of money, the French undertaking 
failed and the Americans took over the enterprise. 

A-NHiile Roosevelt was President, in 1904, control of a 
five-mile zone on both sides of the proposed canal was 
purchased from the Republic of Panama. Then began 
the gigantic task of constructing a ship-canal fifty miles 
long, and of many turnings, through a region where the 
conditions of life were singularly difficult. Triumphantly 
the Army Engineers carried out their great work; while 
the United States Sanitary Department waged a deadly 
war upon the disease-carrying mosquitoes that infested the 
isthmus. 

A canal of such wide importance was not destined for 
the use of one country alone. President Cleveland had 
expressed a universal sentiment when he said that a water- 
way across the isthmus "must be for the world's benefit, a 
trust for mankind, to be removed from the chance of dom- 
ination by any single power, not to become a point of invi- 
tation for hostilities nor a prize for warlike ambition.'* 
The neutralization of the canal was therefore agreed upon 
and guaranteed by the United States. It was further de- 
cided that every vessel making use of the canal should pay 
a fixed toll, so that the "maintenance, protection and op- 
eration of the canal and sanitation and government of the 
canal zone" might be assured. In 1913, when the great 
work of construction was finished. President Wilson had 



DREAM OF COLUMBUS REALIZED 475 

the honor of touching an electric button which set in mo- 
tion the machinery for blowing up the Gamboa dike, the 
last obstruction to navigation between the Atlantic and the 
Pacific Oceans. 

With the opening of the Panama Canal, the dream of 
Columbus was made fact. The "shorter way to India" 
with wliich he had beguiled Queen Isabella's fancy was 
opened up, just four hundred and twenty-one years after 
the good Queen's jewels had been pledged to the finding 
of it. Indeed "the mills of the gods grind slowly — " ! 

In an age when time means money, the Panama Canal 
has come to enrich mankind, to reduce greatly the distance 
that ships have to cover to get from the east to the west 
coasts of America, to shorten the journey between the 
British Isles and their dependencies, and to open the Pa- 
cific Ocean to commerce in a way that it has never been 
opened before. The Canal brings the vast storehouse of 
the East into close touch with the markets of the West and 
makes possible a more sympathetic intercourse between all 
the peoples of the earth. 

The completion of the Panama Canal was bound to 
prove a great stimulus to American trade; but before it 
was even begun, the United States had come to rank first 
among the nations of the world in agriculture, manufac- 
tures, mining, and commercial industries. The extraor- 
dinary prosperity of the country is due largely to its mar- 
velous resources. One-half of the gold and silver of the 
world's supply is produced in the United States. Iron 
ore is contained in at least twenty-nine States, and in such 
quantities that a number of these States could, singly, sup- 
ply the world's demand. The coal is beyond computation, 
there is so much of it. Lead is found in nearly all the 
States ; and there is copper in every Western State except 
Nebraska and Kansas. The salt deposits are limitless. 
Sulphur is abundant. In Nevada, alone, there is enough 



476 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

borax to supply mankind. And these things are only a 
few of the riches locked away m the treasure-house of 
American soil! 

The great forests of the United States supply lumber, 
the preparation of which is a tremendous industry, em- 
ploying about 200,000 hands; while the fisheries employ 
more than 150,000 workers. Over one million and a half 
square miles are devoted to the rearing of cattle ; and from 
the arable land now under cultivation the inhabitants of 
the country are fed, while a half-billion dollars' worth of 
agricultural products are exported every year. It has 
been estimated that if all the arable land in the country 
were brought under the plow, the United States could feed 
450,000,000 inliabitants and still send one-half billion 
bushels of produce out of the country. Is it surprising, 
then, that ^Matthew Arnold said that "America holds the 
future"? 

With all this wealth ready to their hand, it would be 
strange if the Americans did not prosper; but it must be 
remembered that the silver and gold, the coal and the for- 
ests, were there in the daj^s when the Red ]Man roamed 
the land and eked out a bare existence by the help of his 
primitive bow and arrow ! The cumiing old Earth-mother 
guards her secrets from the ignorant. "To them that hath 
(knowledge) shall be given," she saj^s. So, after all, the 
important factor is not so much the resources of the coun- 
try as the intelligence of that country's people. 

The average American is an alert, energetic individual, 
whose chief characteristic is adaptability. He is quick to 
seize upon a good idea and to see the possibility of making 
it better. His whole training has taught him to be re- 
sourceful, to turn the materials the gods have given him to 
account. Just as he has used the power of Niagara Falls 
to light the streets of Buffalo, so he has dra-^vn upon the 
past to build his present. 



DREAM OF COLUMBUS REALIZED 477 

The typewriter and the sewing-machine were first ex- 
perimented with abroad, but they were brought to perfec- 
tion in America, and are now looked upon as the products 
of that country's ingenuity. This has been the history of 
many manufactured articles. Where the American tri- 
umphs over the citizen of other countries, is in his ability 
to make short-cuts to great results. He has a remarkable 
propensity for inventing machinery to save time and labor. 
It is this genius, together with his ample supply of raw 
material, that has enabled him to outstrip the manufac- 
turers of other nations and command the largest market. 

In a book protesting against the American invasion of 
foreign trade, Fred A. JMcKenzie, an Englishman, treats 
the matter in a somewhat exaggerated though humorous 
way: 

"In the domestic life we have come to this," he says. 
"The average man rises in the morning from his New 
England sheets; he shaves with 'Williams' soap and a 
Yankee safety-razor; pulls on his Boston boots over his 
socks from North Carolina; fastens his Connecticut braces; 
slips his Waltham or Waterbury watch into his pocket; 
and sits down to breakfast . . . where he eats bread made 
from prairie flour . . . tinned oysters from Baltimore, 
and a little Kansas City bacon, while his wife plays with 
a slice of Chicago ox-tongue. The children are given 
'Quaker Oats.' At the same time he reads his morning 
paper printed by American machines, on American paper 
with American ink, and, possibly, edited by a smart jour- 
nalist from New York City. He rushes out, catches the 
electric tram (New York) to Shepherd's Bush, where he 
gets into a Yankee elevator to take him on to the Ameri- 
can-fitted electric railway to the city — " Thus the history 
of the American haunted Britisher is carried on through 
the day until "when evening comes he seeks relaxation at 
the latest American musical comedy, drinks a cocktail or 



478 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

some California wine, and finishes up with a couple of 'Lit- 
tle Liver Pills' made in America." 

This might all seem very hard on the Old Country, if 
it were strictly true, but the Britisher who breakfasts off 
Kansas City bacon when he might enjoy his own Wiltshire 
pig, does it of his own free will, and if he prefers American 
musical comedy to Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw — he has 
no one but himself to blame. 

To the United States, immigrants flock from every land. 
Labor is better paid there than in any other country, and 
the great Republic has room for Europe's overflow. 
America is the Mecca of a thousand hopes; and the God- 
dess of Liberty, standing proudly at the entrance to New 
York Harbor, with her torch held high to guide the pil- 
grims to her shrine, has thus had her message to other lands 
interpreted by a Jewess, Emma Lazarus : 

"Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door." 

In the factories and the workshops of the United States, 
Irishman and Scotsman, Jew and Russian, Italian and 
Frenchman, stand shoulder to shoulder with Greek and 
Armenian; of them "God is making the American." 
These last-comers have their place in the vast fabric of 
the Republic as surely as have the Pilgrim Fathers or the 
early Puritans, for 

"These States are the amplest poem, 
Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming 
nation of nations." 






,^- 




CHAPTER LXXVII 

THE RELATION OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE GREAT WAR 

THE Great War broke over Europe in the summer 
of 1914. It came, with very little warning, to 
shatter the foundations of men's thoughts, to strip 
the pretty baubles of peace talk from the savagery of hate, 
and to confound the world with the mercilessness of scien- 
tific destruction. What was to be the attitude of the 
United States toward this earth-shaking war? 

Long ago George Washington had given wise counsel 
to his country in regard to its relations with European na- 
tions; " — nothing is more essential," he said in his fare- 
well address to Congress, "than that permanent inveterate 
antipathies against particular nations, and passionate at- 
tachments for others, should be excluded, and that in place 
of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cul- 
tivated." Farther on in the speech Washington said: 
"Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have 
none, or a very remote, relation. Hence she must be en- 
gaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are 
essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it 
must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties, 
in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary 
combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. 
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us 
to pursue a different course. . . . Why forego the ad- 
vantages of our peculiar situation ? Why quit our own to 
stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our 
destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our 
peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, 

479 



480 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rivalship, interests, humor, or caprice? 'Tis our true 
policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any por- 
tion of the foreign world. . . . Harmony, liberal inter- 
course with all nations, are recommended by policy, human- 
ity, and interest." 

"The duty," said Washington, "of holding a neutral 
conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from 
the obligations which justice and humanity imposes upon 
every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain 
inviolate the relations of peace and amity toward other na- 
tions." 

The first President's advocacy of neutrality was ap- 
proved and strengthened, in 1823, by the Monroe Doc- 
trine: "Our policy in regard to Europe," says that fa- 
mous message of the fifth President, "is, not to interfere 
in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider 
the Government de facto as the legitimate Government for 
us ; to cultivate friendly relations with it ; and to preserve 
those relations by a frank, firm and manly policy, meet- 
ing, in all instances, the just claims of every power; sub- 
mitting to injuries from none." 

When hostilities between Germany and Russia, and 
Germany and France took definite shape, President Wil- 
son offered the good offices of the United States in medi- 
ating the differences that divided the European nations; 
but it was evident that Germany desired no reconciliation, 
so the American hope of bringing about peace was frus- 
trated. 

Early in August, 1914, there arose that controversy 
over "a scrap of paper" which obliged England to enter 
the arena ; so, like a baneful snowball, the Great European 
War went hurtling on its way, collecting venom as it sped, 
and ever attaching to itself fresh belligerents. Appalled, 
but still true to her precepts, the United States declared 
her neutrality. "It was necessary," says President Wil- 



RELATION TO THE GREAT WAR 481 

son, **if a universal catastrophe was to be avoided that a 
limit should be set to the sweep of destructive war, and 
that some part of the great family of nations should keep 
the processes of peace alive." 

Neutrality is not indifference. The day is past when 
the United States could be indifferent to a war convulsing 
Europe; for now America and her European neighbors 
have a thousand mutual interests and reciprocal dealings 
that make their relations a mass of complexity. President 
Wilson's position at the head of the United States has been 
fraught with grave anxiety since the commencement of the 
Great War, for although the Americans are, in some ways, 
profiting by it, the foreign situation has provoked a sym- 
pathetic horror. Domestic affairs have been affected in 
many ways. Commerce has been disarranged. The cot- 
ton growers have been deprived of an important part of 
their market. Imports have become uncertain and the 
prices on many articles have risen. Most serious of all, 
however, have been the complications that have grown up 
in the United States in consequence of intense partisanship 
for one or another of the warring nations. The American 
Republic is made up of many races. The country has 
been likened to a vast Melting Pot, in which representa- 
tives of about sixty-five nationalities are being transmuted 
into Americans. As a rule the process of amalgamation 
is so rapid that America is often spoken of as "The grave- 
yard of Europe." In a brew of such varied ingredients, 
however, it would be strange if some of the elements were 
not more slowly assimilated than others. 

The European conflict has had one salutary effect in 
America. It has convinced the people of the United 
States that adequate defense is the most telling argument 
for peace, and has induced the Government to authorize 
a revolution in the defensive program of the country. A 
great ship-building plan has been adopted which will raise 



482 STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the status of the American Navy; strong coast defenses 
are being provided; and the standing army is to be sub- 
stantially increased. While grim war stalks the world, it 
is oi;ily fitting that the great American Republic should 
have every facility for the protection of its liberty. 

In November, 1915, there was witnessed at many a 
railway station in the United States a curious pageant. 
It consisted of a long train of eight special cars. One of 
them was a flat car, and above its broad platform rose 
a huge supporting standard from which hung the most 
famous bell in the world. Great multitudes flocked to 
the stations to see this bell pass by, and to salute it with 
reverence; for this was the Liberty Bell, returning to 
Philadelphia from the San Diego Exposition in Cali- 
fornia, where it had been on view. In 1776, when the 
United States took its place among the nations of the 
world as an independent country, this old bell was the 
first to proclaim the good news. It rang to inform the 
eager citizens of Philadelphia that the Declaration of In- 
dependence had been adopted. On its side are inscribed 
these words: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land 
to all the inhabitants thereof." Now the bell is cracked 
and mute. It may never again peal forth tidings of joy, 
but even so, it still has a message for the United States 
of America, and that message may best be interpreted 
in the words of America's poet, Walt Whitman : 

"I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are 
for, 
I know not fruition's success ; but I know that through 
war and crime your work goes on, and must yet go 
on." 



CONCLUSION 

IN December of 1914 a great white ship, the Jason, set 
out from America for Europe. It sailed under a 
flag that bore the star of peace, and its mission was to 
carry Christmas cheer to thousands of little children in 
lands where the shadow of war obscured the Christmas joy. 
Like the ship in the nursery song, the Jason had. "comfits 
in the cabin and apples in the hold." Its sails were not 
made of silk, nor its masts of gold, but, stowed away 
among bundles of warm caps and gloves, of dolls and 
sacks of flour, it carried an invisible cargo of loving kind- 
ness. 

On its voyage of sympathy the Jason called at many 
ports, and so when this Great War is at an end, may it be 
the happiness of the American Ship of State to help in 
the distribution of impartial justice, to further good- will, 
and to watch the flowering of peace on earth. 



483 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For facts used in this book the author is especially indebted to 
the following works: 

Synge, W. B.: Tiiii Discovery OF New Worlds. (Blackwood, 
1908.) 

Bancroft, G. : History of the United States of America. 
From the Discovery of the Continent. (D. Appleton & 
Co., 1886.) 

Channing, E.: The United States of America. (Macmillun, 
1896.) 

Adams, H. C. : History of the United States. 

Mackenzie, R. : America, a History. (Nelson, 1887.) 

Wright, H. C. : Children's Stories in American History. 
(Charles Scribncr's Sons, 1907.) 

Catlin, G. : The North American Indians. (The Egyptian 
Hall, 1841.) 

Maclean, J. : Canadian Savage Folk. (William Briggs, To- 
ronto, 1896.) 

Frost, J.; Illuminated History or North America. (Henry 
Hill, New York, 1857.) 

Irving, W. : The Life and Voyages of Christopher Colum- 
bus. (1885.) 

Irving, W. : Life of George Washington. (Casscll & Co., 
Ltd., 1885.) 

Lodge, H. C. : George Washington. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
1889.) 

Thayer, W. M. : George Washington, a Biography. 

Eggleston, E. : The Household History of the United 
States and Its People. (Appleton, 1889.) 

FiSK, J. : The American Revolution. (Boston, 1891.) 

Trevelyan, Sir George: The American Revolution, 
(Longmans, Green, 1900.) 

Bradley, A. G. : The Fight with France for North Amer- 
ica. (E. p. Dutton, 1900.) 

Ingles, F. C. : Notes on a Wax Medallion. Relative Auto- 
graph Letters of Paul Jones. (Edinburgh, 1906.) 

485 



486 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BuEL, A. C. : Paul. Jones, Foundee of the American Navy. 
(Scribner, 1900.) 

FiTCHETT, W. : Deeds that Won the Empiee. (Scribner, 
1899.) 

Deake, S. a.: The Making of the Great West. (London, 
1887.) 

Mahan, a. T. : Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 
1812. (Little, Brown & Company, 1905.) 

Goodwin, M. W. : Women of Colonial and Revolutionary 
Times in America. (Murray, 1896.) 

Young, T. M. : The American Cotton Industry. (Scribner, 
1902.) 

FoRMBY, J.: The American Civil War — A Concise History 
OF Its Causes, Progress and Results. (Scribner, 1900.) 

Brooks, N. ; Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Ameri- 
can Slavery. (Putnam, 1908.) 

Rhodes, J. F. : Lectures on the American Civil War. 
(Macmillan, 1913.) 

Allan, W. : Stonewall Jackson's Campaign in the Shenan- 
doah Valley of Virginia. (London, 1912.) 

Long, J. D. : The New American Navy. (Macmillan, 1904.) 

McKenzie, F. C. : The American Invaders. (London.) 

Mills, J. S. : The Panama Canal. (Nelson, 1914.) 

Whitman, W. : Leaves of Grass and Democratic Vistas. 
(Caldwell.) 

Zangwill, I. : The Melting Pot. (Heinemann, 1914.) 

The Presidents of the United States. (Edited by G. J. Wil- 
son, London, 1895.) 

American War Ballads and Lyrics. (Edited by E. C. Eg- 
gleston. ) 

The Cambridge Modern History (Vol. VIII). (Cambridge 
University Press, 1903.) 

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 Vols.). (The Cen- 
tury Co., 1884.) 

Criminal Trials (Vol. II) — Trial of Captain Kidd. (Knight 
& Lace, 1825.) 

Putnam's Handbook of Universal History. (Knickerbocker 
Press, 1914.) 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For some of the quotations in verse and prose used in this book. 

"Vague legends . . ." — H. H., in The Century Magazine of 1882. 
"On the desolate shore . . ." — "The Double-Headed Snake of 

Newbury," by John G. Whittier. 
"O to see them meanly cling . . ."—"The Curse of Charter- 
Breakers," by John G. Whittier. 
"There's a land that boasts of its good free will . . ." — "The 

Slaves," by J. E. Carpenter. 
". . . weary, sad and slow . . ." — "The Farewell," by John G. 

Whittier. 
«_e'en that land that is free in name . . ." — "The Slaves," by 

J. E. Carpenter. 
"The wheeze of the slave-coffle . . ."— "Salut Au Monde!" by 

Walt Whitman. 
"The lawyer leaving his office and arming . . ." — "Drum-Taps," 

by Walt Whitman. 
"Lay down the axe, fling up the spade . . ."—"Our Country's 

Call," by W. C. Bryant. 
"It is done ! Clang of bell and roar of gun . . ." — "Laus Deo !" 

by John G. Whittier. 
"O, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come . . ."—"At Port 

Royal," by John G. Whittier. 
"Turning his bridle, Robert Lee . . ."—"Lee to the Rear," by 

John R. Thompson. 
(Long prose quotation) — "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," 

published by The Century Co. 



487 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abercrombie, General, 116, 117 
Acadians sent into exile, 113, 114 
Adams, John, 222, 234, 236-239 
Adams, John Quincy, 289 
Adams, Samuel, 153, 161 
Adventure Galley, tlie, 98 
Agiiinaldo, 457, 465 
Alabama, the, 440 
Alabama Claims, the, 440 
Alaska, purchase of, 449 
Alexander, Indian Chief, 69 
Alfred, the, 195 
Allen, Ethan, 159, 160 
Amidas, 37, 38 
Anderson, Major, 345 
Andre, Major, 202, 204-206 
Andros, Governor, 137 
Antietam, battle of, 378 
Arabella, the, 58 
Ark, the, 79 

Arnold, Benedict, 188, 203-205, 213 
Arthur, Chester A., 443 
Atchison, Dave, 321 

Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 18-20 

Ball, Mary, 130, 131 

Baltimore, Lord, 78-81 

Bank, General, 407 

Barlow, 37, 38 

Beauregard, P. G. T., 350, 365 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 321 

Bellamont, Governor, 99 

Bemis Heights, battle of, 189 

Berkeley, Lord John, 83 

Biarni, 2 

Bienville, Cderon de, 105 

Black Kettle, Indian Chief, 448 

Blue Jacket, Indian Chief, 231 

Bon Homme Richard, the, 197, 198 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 238, 250 

Boone, Daniel, 230 

Booth, John Wilkes, 428, 431 

Boston Massacre, the, 146 

Boston Tea Party, 147 

Bouquet, General, 127 

Braddock, General, 110-112 

Bradford, William, 54 

Bragg, Braxton, 398 



491 



Brandy wine, battle of, 182 

Breckinridge, John C, 417 

Broke, Captain, 270 

Brown, Jacob, 277 

Brown, John, 325-328 

Bryan, William Jennings, 451 

Buchanan, James, 323, 324, 341 

Buell, Don Carlos, 365, 398 

Bull Run, battle of, 350-352, 375 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 161-166 

Burgoyne, General, 161, 181, 185-191 

Burnside, Ambrose E., 379, 388-390 

Burr, Aaron, 238, 251, 252 

Bushy Run, battle of, 127 



Cabot, John, 13 

Cabot, Sebastian, 13 

Calhoun, John C, 291 

Calvert, Cecil, 79 

Calvert, George, 78 

Calvert, Leonard, 79 

Camara, Admiral, 456 

Campbell, Colonel, 208 

Canonicus, Indian Chief, 54 

Carondolet, the, 366 

Carpetbaggers, the, 436-438 

Carteret, Sir George, 83 

Carver, John, 52 

Cervera, Admiral, 456, 457, 459, 460, 

461, 463 
Champlain, Samuel de, 100 
Chancellorsville, battle of, 390 
Charles I, 58, 78 
Charles II, 76, 81, 83, 84 
Charter colonies, 137 
Charter Oak, 137 
Chattanooga, battle of, 403 
Chesapeake, the, 269-271 
Chickamauga, battle of, 403 
Clark, William, 254-258 
Clarke, George Rogers, 211 
Clay, Henry, 286, 289, 291, 293, 314 
Cleveland, Grover, 443^46, 450, 473 
Clinton, Sir Henry, 161, 186, 201-204, 

207, 212-214, 224 
Coligny, Admiral, 34 
Columbia, the, 253 



492 



INDEX 



Columbus, Christopher, dreams of, 
6-8; first voyage of, 9-11; other 
voyages, 11, 12 

"Compromise of 1850," 315 

Congress, the, 381 

Constitution, the, 267, 268, 269 

Continental Congress, First, 155; 
Second, 167 

Cornwallis, Lord, 179, 212-214 

Crawford, William H., 289 

Crown Point, Fort, 117, 160 

Cuba, discovery of, 11 

Cumberland, the, 380 

Custer, George A., 448, 449 

Custis, Martha, 184, 185 

Czolgosz, Leon, 466 

Davis, Jefferson, President of the 

Confederacy, 342-424 
Dearborn, Fort, 265 
Decatur, Lieutenant, 240, 241, 268 
Declaration of Independence, the, 

adopted, 173 
Deerfield, town of, 103 
Defiance, Fort, 273 
De Gourgues, Dominique, 36 
De Kalb, Baron, 190 
Delaware, Lord, 47 
De Soto, Ferdinand, 17 
Detroit, Fort, saved by Indian girl, 

125, 126; withstands siege, 127 
Dewey, George, 456, 457 
Digby, Admiral, 215 
Dinwiddle, Lieutenant-Governor, 107, 

109 
Donelson, Fort, 364 
Douglas, Stephen A., 319, 330 
Dove, the, 79 
Drake, the, 197 
Drake, Sir Francis, 39 
Dred Scott Case, 325 
Du Quesne, Fort, 107-112, 117 



Early, Jubal A., 418-420 

Edw"ard, Fort, 186 

Eliot, John, 72 

Elizabeth, Queen, 37, 38, 93 

Emancipation Proclamation, 385-388, 

433 
Embargo Act, 260 
Endicott, John, 58 
"Era of Good Feeling," 284 
Ericson, Leif, 2 
Eric the Red, 2 
Erie, Fort, 276 
Evans, Captain, 463 



Fairfax, Lord, 1S2 
Farragut, David G., S8S 
Ferdinand, King of Spain, 7, 11, 19 
FiUmore, Millard, 317, 318, 323 
Fletcher, Rear-Admiral, 471 
Florida, discovery of, 17 
Folsom, Frances, 444 
Foote, Commodore, 364 
Fountain of Youth, the, 17 
Franklin, Benjamin, 149-152, 219 
Fredericksburg, battle of, 389 
Fredys, 3 

Fremont, John C, 300, 323 
Frolic, the, 268 
Frontenac, Count, 102 
Frontenac, Fort, 117 
Fugitive Slave Law, 314, 315 

Gage, General, 155, 156, 161-166, 168, 
169 

Garfield, James A., 442, 443 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 312, 313 

Gates, General, 188-190, 209 

George II, 88, 115 

George III, 141, 142, 155, 156, 166, 
172, 173, 175, 214 

Germain, Lord, 187 

Germantown, battle of, 183 

Gladwyn, Major, 126 

Glasgow, the, 196 

Goffe, W^illiam, 71 

Gosnold, Bartholomew, 41 

Grant, Ulysses S., 298; campaign 
against Lee, 406-423; early life, 
405; elected President, 435; fighting 
for the control of the Mississippi, 
364-367, 399-402; in White House, 
440, 441 ; made commander-in-chief 
of the Union army, 403; reelected 
President, 441 

Gray, Captain, 253 

Greeley, Horace, 441 

Greene, Nathanael, 212, 213 

Greenland, discovery of, 2 

Green Mountain Boys, 159, 160 

Grenville, Sir Richard, 39 

Gudrid, the Beautiful, 3 

Guerridre, the, 268 

Half Moon, the, 73 

Hale, Captain, Nathan, 206 

Halleck, General 375 

Hamilton, Alexander, 227, 228, 251 

Hancock, John, 161 

Hanks, Nancy, 332-335 

Harmar, General, 231 

Harrison, Benjamin, 445, 446 



INDEX 



493 



Harrison, Fort, 265 

Harrison, William Henry, 262, 273- 

276, 292, 293 
Hardee, William J., 416 
Harvard, John, 61 
Hawaii, annexation of, 450 
Hawkins, Sir John, 92 
Hayes, Rutherford B., 441, 442 
Hazel, Caleb, 333 
Helluland, 3 
Henry, Fort, 364 
Henry, Patrick, 145, 153 
Hobson, Richmond P., 457, 459 
Hooker, Joseph, 390, 393 
Hopkins, Commodore, 195, 196 
Hornet, the, 269 
Houston, Sam, 294 
Howe, Captain, 121 
Howe, General, 116, 161, 163-166, 169, 

170, 175, 178, 181, 182, 201, 202 
Howe, General Robert, 208 
Hudson, Henry, 73, 74 
Huguenots, the, 34-36 
Huerta, Victoriano, 471 
Hull, General, 264, 265 
Hunter, David, 417 
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 59, 60 

Indians of North America, 21-32 
Iowa, the, 461, 462 
Isabella, Queen of Spain, 7, 8, 11, 12 
Island No. 10, surrender of, 366, 367 

Jackson, Andrew, 287, 288, 289-291, 

313 
Jackson, "Stonewall" (Thomas J.), 

351, 371-374, 378, 391 
Jamaica, discovery of, 11 
James I, 42, 50, 66 
Jamestown, settlement of, 43 
Jason, the, 483 
Jasper, Sergeant, 210 
Java, the, 269 
Jav, John, 227, 233 
Jefferson, Thomas, 173, 227, 234, 236, 

238-242, 249, 250, 259 
Johnson, Andrew, 434, 435 
Johnson, Colonel, 276 
Johnston, Albert Sidney, 365 
Johnston, Joseph E., "351, 371, 374, 

401, 407, 417 
Johnston, Sally Bush, 336 
Joliet, 101 

Jones, John Paul, 192-200 
Jones, William Paul, 192, 193 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 319-322, 330 



Kearney, Colonel, 300 
Kearsarge, the, 440 
Key, Francis Scott, 282 
Kidd, Captain William, 98, 99 
Kieft, Governor, 75 
Know-Nothings, the, 323 
Knox, Henry, 227 
Ku Klux Klan, the, 437, 438 



Lafayette, 190, 191, 202, 213 

Lake Erie, battle of, 275 

La Salle, 101 

Laudonni^re, 35 

Lawrence, Captain, 269-271 

Lee, Charles, 203 

Lee, Fitzhugh, 454 

Lee, Henry, 360 

Lee, Robert E., 298; at Gettysburg, 
393-396 ; captures John Brown, 327 ; 
convinced of slavery evils, 313, 361; 
defeats Burnside and Hooker, 389- 
391; early years of, 360, 361; in- 
vades Maryland, 378; opposes Grant 
in great campaign, 406-423; re- 
fuses command of Union army, 
361; surrenders to Grant, 423, 424; 
takes command of Confederate 
army, 374; victory at second battle 
of Bull Run, 375 

Lexington, battle of, 158 

Lewis, Meriwether, 254-258 

Lincoln, Abraham, 298; after the 
war, 425-428; assassinated, 428; 
calls forth the militia, 346; colossus 
of the war, 356; condemns Mexican 
War, 298; early life, 331-338; 
elected President, 330; enters poli- 
tics, 339; enters Confederate Capi- 
tal, 422; inaugurated, 344; issues 
Emancipation Proclamation, 385; 
life at the White House, 357-360; 
marries Mary Todd, 339; reelected 
President, 420; sends peremptory 
orders to McClellan, 370, 378 

Lincoln, Thomas, 331-338 

Lindley, Mary, 177 

Little Turtle, Indian Chief, 231 

Livingston, Robert R., 224, 250 

Long Island, battle of, 176 

Lookout Mountain, battle of, 403 

"Lords Proprietors, the," 81, 82 

Louisbourg, taken by New England 
militia, 104; siege of, 116 

Louisiana, purchase of, 250 
Lundy's Lane, battle of, 276 

Lyon, the, 59 



494 



INDEX 



Macdonough, Commodore, 277 
Macedonian, the, 268 
Mackinaw, Fort, 126, 264 
Madison, Dolly, 243-246, 261, 277 
Madison, James, 242, 244, 261, 263, 

265, 283, 287 
Maine, the, 454, 455 
Manassas, battle of, 375 
Manassas, the, 383 
Manhattan Island, purchase of, 75 
Maria Teresa, the, 461^63 
Marion, Francis, 210, 211 
Markland, 3 
Mason, James M., 355 
"Massachusetts Bay Company," 58 
Massassoit, Indian Chief, 54, 69 
Mayflower, the, 52 
McClellan, George B., 348, 352, 353, 

354 370-379 
McDowell, Irvin, 350, 351, 352, 371 
McHenry, Fort, 282 
McKinley, William, 451-467 
Meade, George Gordon, 393-396, 407 
Meigs, Fort, 274 
Mernmac, the, 380-382 
Merrimac, the, collier, 458, 459 
Merritt, Major-General, 457 
Michillimackinac, Fort, 126 
Miles, Nelson A., 463 
Minnesota, the, 381 
"Minute-men," 157 
Missionary Ridge, battle of, 403 
Mississippi River, discovery of, 18 
Missouri Compromise, 286, 319 
Monitor, the, 381 
Monmouth, battle of, 202 
Monroe Doctrine, the, 288, 480 
Monroe, James, 250, 284, 287-289 
Montcalm, Marquis, 115, 116, 118-122 
Montojo, y\dmiral, 456, 457 
Mound Builders, the, 2 

Necessity, Fort, 109 

New Amsterdam, 76 

New Netherland, 75, 76 

New Orleans, battle of, 279-281 

Niagara, the, 275 

Nina, the, 9 

Norsemen, the, 2 

Oglethorpe, James, 87-91 
Old Ironsides, 269 
Otis, James, 153 

Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 20 
Fakenham, Sir Edward, 279, 280 



Panama Canal, construction of, 474; 

opening of, 471, 475 
Payne, John, 242, 243 
Peacock, the, 269 
Pemberton, John C, 401 
Pendleton Act, 444 
Penn, William, 83-86 
Percy, Lord, 158 
Perry, Oliver Hazard, 275 
Perry Treaty, 318 
Petersburg, siege of, 410-413 
Philip, Indian Chief, 69-72 
Philippines, annexed, 464 
Phillips, General, 213 
Phillips, Wendell, 314 
Pierce, Franklin, 318 
Pigot, General, 163 
Pilgrims, the, escape to Holland, 51; 

land in America, 53; visited by the 

Puritans, 61 
Pinta, the, 9 
Pinzon, Martin, 10 
Piracy, 97-99 
Pitcairn, Major, 157 
Pitt, Fort, 117, 127 
Pitt, William, 115, 117, 141, 145, 146, 

155, 207 
Pittsburgh, the, 367 
Pittsburg Landing, battle of, 365 
Plymouth Rock, 53 
Pocahontas, 45-47 
Polk, James Knox, 293, 294, 299 
Ponce de Leon, 16 
Pontiac, Indian Cliief, 123-128 
Pope, Anne, 130 
Pope, John, 366, 375 
Porter, Horace, 200 
Porto Rico, annexed, 464 
Powhatan, 43, 45, 46 
Prescott, Colonel, 163, 163 
Prevost, General, 208, 277 
Princeton, battle of, 180 
Proctor, General, 274-276 
Proprietary colonies, 137 
Pulaski, Count, 190 
Puritans, the, 57-68 
Putnam, Israel, 162, 177 

Quakers, the, 64, 65, 83-86 
Quebec, taken by English, 118-122 
Queen Anne's War, 103 

Raleigh, Sir AValter, 37-41 

Randolph, the, 196 

Ranger, the, 196 

Rathbone, Major, 428 

Red Eagle, Indian Chief, 280 



INDEX 



495 



Revere, Paul, 157 

Rhode Island, settlement of, 59 

Rich Mountain, battle of, 348 

Riney, Zachariah, 333 

Roanoke Island, 39, 40 

Rochambeau, General, 214 

Rodgers, Captain, 124 

Rolfe, John, 46 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 467-470, 474 

Rosecrans, William S., 399, 403 

Royal colonies, 137 

Salem Witchcraft, 66-68 

Sampson, Rear-Admiral, 457, 460, 461 

Sandusky, Fort, 126 

San Juan, battle of, 460 

San Salvador, discovery of, 10 

Santa Anna, 297, 302 

Santa Maria, the, 9 

Santa Maria de Rabida, Convent of, 

7 
Santiago, surrender of, 463 
Schley, Commodore, 457 
Scottj General, 297, 302, 303, 353 
Separatists, the, 50 
Serapis, the, 197, 198 
Seven Days' Fight, the, 374 
Seven Pines, battle of, 373 
Seward, William H., 345, 431 
Seymour, Horatio, 435 
Shafter, General, 460, 463 
Shannon, the, 270, 271 
Sheridan, Philip H., 418-420 
Sherman, William T., 401, 403, 407, 

414-417 
Shiloh, battle of, 365 
Shraellings, the, 3 
Sigel, General, 407, 417 
Sigsbee, Captain, 454 
Sitting Bull, Indian Chief, 449 
Slidell, John, 355 
Smith, Captain John, 43-47 
Smith, Colonel, 156 
Smith, Joseph, the first Mormon, 305 
Speedwell, the, 52 
Stamp Act, the, 144, 145 
Standish, Captain Miles, 54 
Star-Spangled Banner, The, origin of, 

282 
St. Augustine, founding of, 35 
St. Clair, General, 186, 231, 232 
Stephens, Alexander, Vice-President 

of the Confederacy, 313, 433 
Stephenson, Fort, 274 
Steuben, Baron, 190 
Stony Point, capture of, 203 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 315 



Stuyvesant, Peter, 75-77 
Sullivan, General, 209 
Sumner, General, 373 
Sumter, Fort, 345 
Sumter, Thomas, 210 
Swansea, 69 

Taft, William Howard, 469, 470 
Taylor, Zachary, 296, 297, 317 
Tecumseh, Indian Chief, 262-264, 274, 

276 
Texas, the, 462 
Thanksgiving Day, 55 
Thomas, General, 403 
Thorvald, 3 
Ticonderoga, Fort, 116, 117, 159, 160, 

186 
Tilden, Samuel J., 441 
Tippecanoe, battle of, 263 
Todd, James, 243 
Todd, John Payne, 244 
Todd, Mary, 339, 360 
Trinidad, discovery of, 12 
Tripoli, war with, 240 
Tyler, John, 292, 293 

"United Colonies of New England," 

61 
United States, the, 268 

Van Buren, Martin, 291-294 
Van Dorn, Earl, 368, 398 
Venezuela, 14 
Vespucius, Americus, 14 
Vera Cruz, occupation of, 471 
Vernon, Admiral, 132 
Vicksburg, siege of, 399-401 
Vinland, 3 
Virginia, the, 380-382 

Wadsworth, Captain, 137 

Washington, Augustine, father of 
George Washington, 130; half- 
brother, 131 

Washington, George, at Valley Forge, 
183-185; at Yorktown, 214; chosen 
Commander-in-Chief, 167; chosen 
President, 221; dies at Mount Ver- 
non, 234; early years, 130-133; es- 
cape from Long Island, 177; in- 
augurated, 224-226; marches against 
Clinton, 202; marriage, 134, 135; 
meets General Howe, 181, 182; 
mythical sword of, 336, 328; refuses 
kingship, 218; saves Braddock's 
army, 112; takes Trenton, 179; tri- 



496 



INDEX 



umphal march to New York, 222- 

224., 
Washington, John, 129, 130 
Washington, Lawrence, ancestor of 

George Washington, 129, 130; 

grandfather, 130; half-brother, 132 
Wasp, the; 268 

Wayne, Anthony, 202, 232, 233 
Wayne, Fort, 265 
Webster, Daniel, 291, 318 
Wells, William, 233 
Wesley, Charles, 90; John, 90 
^\^^ite', John, 39, 40 
White, Peregrine, 52 
Wilderness, the, battle of, 407, 408 



William Henry, Fort, 115 

William Henry, Prince, 214 

Williams, Roger, 59 

Wilson, Woodrow, 470-472, 474, 480, 

481 
Winchester, battle of, 418 
Winchester, General, 273 
Winthrop, John, 58 
Wolfe, James, 118-122 

Yankee Doodle, origin of, 110 
Yarmouth, the, 196 
Yorke, Duke of, 76, 84 
YorktoHTi, surrender of, 214 
Young, Brigbam, 305-309 



